Saw: The Final Chapter ★★½
THE seventh instalment in the Saw franchise, Saw: The Final Chapter, is ruined by a critical series of technical errors by the film makers and studio.
The horror film was made in 2010 during a period when 3D had a resurgence. First mistake – the decision to do a 3D film at all; it’s a pointless gimmick.
It was then decided to use a specialised 3D camera for all the actual filming, rather than using a traditional camera and then adding the 3D effects afterwards. Second mistake.
One of the problems with 3D viewing is the loss of light caused by having to wear those stupid glasses. The technical team used pink-coloured blood – 20-odd gallons in total by the way – because they believed it would eventually appear red to the viewer after subsequent processing of the film. Third mistake – it didn’t.
Fourth, and worst, mistake – after discovering the problem they decided not to post-correct the pink colour to red for home viewing. Whether this was a cost, timing or other issue, is irrelevant. What we are left with is an effect even more distracting that digitally-created blood.
Film a horror movie with a digital camera if you have to but, for goodness sake, use practical effects, including the right colour blood squibs, whenever possible.
It’s a shame because the film isn’t too bad otherwise. It was meant to be the last in the series and does try to bring the story full circle to the original film and, while doing so, take a lap of honour by re-introducing ‘highlights’ from the series.
The story enables this to be done relatively easily.
The prologue takes us back to the end of the original film when the serial killer Jigsaw left his victims to die in a basement. We see Dr. Lawrence Gordon, played by Cary Elwes, survive cutting his own foot off by cauterising the stump on a boiling steam pipe.
Five years later Jigsaw is still engaged his old tricks, kidnapping people he believes have got away with a crime of some sort and making them fight their way out of deadly elaborate traps. Of course most people don’t manage it successfully and are either killed or maimed.
At the same time the net is closing on a police detective, Mark Hoffman, who has been revealed to be a secretly twisted character who has been duplicating Jigsaw’s acts.
But the central character is a self-help guru Bobby Dagen who has become a minor celebrity and talk-show favourite after managing to escape from one of Jigsaw’s traps. As well as promoting his latest book, Bobby and his entourage are visiting ‘Jigsaw Survivor’ therapy groups. It’s at these sessions where the film dives into its gory back catalogue.
Saw 7 is a little convoluted but holds together for the majority of its running time. It features a variety of new traps, some quite elaborate pieces of machinery but others fairly straightforward. Unlike all the other films in the series, this finale is rated R18+. A particular trap involving a bloke glued to the seat of a car is particularly gruesome.
The acting is a little uneven, with Tobin Bell as Jigsaw and Sean Patrick Flannery as Bobby thankfully turning in the best performances.
Of course the so-called ‘Final Chapter’ wasn’t the final chapter. We had an eighth film, Jigsaw, in 2017 and a related story, called Spiral, will be released in 2021.