FILM - "Saw III"

This new Jigsaw is a real bitch. Literally. In Saw III, Amanda (Shawnee Smith), once a victim herself, has taken up the gruesome, game-playing mantle of Jigsaw, creating clever contraptions that test a person’s will to live through pain and suffering. But Amanda isn’t interested in the old Jigsaw’s (Tobin Bell) tests: in her world, just because you plunge your hand into a vat of acid so that you can unlock the harness that’s seconds away from ripping your spinal cord apart . . . that doesn’t mean you should live. And should you manage to rip all the thick ringlets out of your skin before the bomb in the room explodes, you’ll find that the door has been soldered shut. Sucks to be you.

After these establishing deaths (horror “street cred,” as it were), Saw III focuses on what makes a person work for the man who placed a reverse bear trap in their mouth and the key to its lock in the stomach of a drugged but otherwise very much alive person. A series of flashbacks (that include former cast members Leigh Whannell and Donnie Wahlberg) give closure to all the storylines and set up one final test. Luckily for us (and unluckily for everyone else), John is still alive, and this last game, played from his deathbed, is a killer. Fans—you won’t be disappointed. Saw III is as sick as it is slick.

Read on at [Film Monthly]