Saw VI (2009)

You just can't keep a good horror movie villain down. As long as the audience wants to see them, they'll keep popping back up. That's one of the big reasons why Frankenstein's Monster has appeared in dozens of movies that date as far back as 1910. Modern villains like Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger popped up in numerous movies over the course of the '80s, but by the time the new millennium rolled around, classic horror villains started making less and less appearances.

But then Lions Gate Films and Twisted Pictures made their own villain for modern horror fans. When Saw made an unexpectedly huge splash at the box office in 2004, the sequels kept coming like clockwork. And they're still coming, as we've already reached the movie we're here to discuss now, Saw VI. The latest chapter in the story of Jigsaw and his apprentices, Saw VI continues the path laid forth by its five predecessors and sets things up for the road ahead in this perfectly acceptable sequel.

Detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is now free to fully take over where Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) left off, having eliminated Agent Strahm while framing him for the murders. While he tries to make absolute certain that all his tracks have been covered and cover up any evidence connecting him to the crimes, it's time for him to begin the next game.

With a little help from Jigsaw's ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell), Hoffman captures William Easton (Peter Outerbridge), a health insurance executive that routinely denies claims to people who actually need them. The game William will have to play will also involve numerous employees from his firm, all of them put into life-or-death situations in order to teach William that life is of greater value than money.

The Saw franchise hasn't ever really felt the need to deviate from its basic formula. All the movies need are plenty of grotesque death traps and plot twists that would make M. Night Shyamalan say, "Whoa, cut back on the twists." Five movies have used that formula, but Saw VI decided it was going to be different. It uses the formula, but chooses to add a little heavy-handed social commentary into the mix. And it actually makes the movie stand out from the others because of that attempt at making a statement.

But we'll get to that in a moment. My reviews have their own formula, so let's stick to it and begin with the direction. Handling those duties is Kevin Greutert, the editor of the first five Saw movies. This is his first feature-length movie as a director, and while there isn't anything groundbreaking about his work, there doesn't need to be.

Greutert does a better job than I expected, though, especially in the cases when he goes against the franchise's usual color palette of dark grays, blues, and greens. Some of the traps the primary victim encounters are lighted with reds, oranges, and yellows, which I thought really helped to set the movie apart from its predecessors. However, there are times when felt his direction was a touch uninspired. It is these instances when it seems as if he's just duplicating what James Wan, Darren Lynn Bousman, and David Hackl had done with the previous entries in the series.

Next up is the cast. I have to admit that I'm not quite sure if there's a point in doing so, because I doubt very many people are watching the Saw movies for the acting. And really, it's all more of the same anyway. But because I'm a slave to the routine, let's break it down regardless.

Tobin Bell pops up for the sixth straight movie, and he once again contributes a solid performance. He gets a little hammy at times, but he's still good in the role. But I do wonder how often he's thought about just phoning it in. He got killed off in Saw III, so there's no real forward movement for the character. The only reasons Jigsaw has been in the movies since then are to fill in plot holes and add to his background. Any other movie would have left Jigsaw's origin story to the viral marketing, but not the Saw franchise. But I'm just happy that Bell has remained relatively consistent throughout the series.

Moving on to the rest of the cast, I did like Costas Mandylor as our primary villain. He comes off a bit stiff at times, but I thought it worked well for the character. The character of Hoffman is a cop trying to hide the fact that he's the murderer he's supposed to be hunting, so Mandylor being stiff could always be excused as what happens when a snake pretends he isn't one.

Moving along to the supporting cast, I thought that Betsy Russell contributed a fine performance as Jill. Her work here is understated, calm almost to the point of being creepy, but it only serves to make the character more intriguing. Russell makes the viewer wonder what's going on inside Jill's head, wonder what her thought process is and what she's planning or scheming. I was a bit apprehensive about the character going down the path she has taken, but that won't be a problem as long as Russell's performances stay constant in the sequels.

Playing the movie's primary victim is Peter Outerbridge, whose work I wasn't exactly thrilled with. It's not that he's bad, but he didn't strike me as being too good either. I guess part of it is because his subplot not only seems preachy, but superfluous as well. If it were me, I'd have dropped the whole thing and made the whole movie about just Hoffman and Jill. But that's just me, I guess. Anyway, Outerbridge doesn't do a bad job, so he's got that going for him. Unfortunately, he struck me as just being kinda there most of the time.

The rest of the supporting cast doesn't really make much of a splash, though. I will say, however, that I thought Devon Bostick — who plays Outerbridge's character's son — is really bad, and I though Tanedra Howard's performance as a trap victim early in the movie was almost laughable thanks to her overacting. Then again, Howard's only in the movie at all because she won the part on a VH1 game show, so maybe lame acting was to be expected? At least Shawnee Smith was watchable in her brief appearances through flashbacks.

However, what makes this entry into the Saw franchise stand apart from the ones that preceded it is the writing. Penned by the returning duo of Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, the script sticks to the franchise's usual formula while bringing in that social commentary I mentioned previously. The whole thing is an indictment of greedy health insurance companies, and it gets so preachy that you can practically feel the movie trying to hit you over the head with their smarmy attempt at some sort of message.

I'd have no problem with it if it weren't done so overt. But Melton and Dunstan don't even bother with subtlety. They whip it out and practically beat you to death with it. Okay, insurance companies are ripping people off, I get it! If I wanted to watch someone's condemnation of the nation's health programs, I'd go rent that Michael Moore documentary Sicko. This lack of subtlety is astounding enough, but part of it feels like a cheap excuse to justify half of Tobin Bell's scenes. Granted, it's nice to see the Saw movies try expanding beyond the formula, but I just wish it hadn't been done in such a heavy-handed way.

The other half of the plot, however, is better written. I thought the story of Hoffman trying to cover all his bases and contend with Jill was a more intriguing story, and as I said previously, I'd have much rather seen an entire movie based on that than having to balance it with the insurance executive's gauntlet of horrors. It not only helped further along the franchise's overall arc, but also tied up a lot of the loose ends that had accumulated over throughout the last few entries in the franchise. It was very well done, which I felt was in stark contrast to just how lame the other storyline is.

While I'm on the topic of the script, I wanted to bring up an interesting subtext that Melton and Dunstan bring up yet never fully explore. It's really only brought up at the beginning of the movie, when two people forced to play a "game" must mutilate themselves in order to live. One doesn't survive, while the other (played by the aforementioned Tanedra Howard) only does so after hacking an arm off at the elbow. She's questioned by Detective Hoffman at the hospital, who asks her just what she learned from her experience. Her response: holding up the stub where her arm once was and shrieking, "What am I supposed to learn from this?"

Jigsaw's whole gimmick has always been to teach people the value of human life by making them face their own deaths. But his grand scheme hasn't really worked out that well. Not very many people survive his games, but the survivors that turn up in later entries into the series never seem to learn anything. The one I mentioned in the previous paragraph, for example. The most prominent evidence of this — Jigsaw's first apprentice, Amanda — became a murderer whose traps never gave victims the same chance to live that Jigsaw gave her. And even Hoffman is depicted as being particularly coldhearted, quite unlike Jigsaw, who seemingly does feel at least a little compassion for his victims even while putting them through the ringer. That subtext is one that I wish the movie had examined further, because it could make for some compelling storytelling if done right.

As a whole, Saw VI is a mishmash of good and bad that, while most assuredly not flawless, is at least a step up from the two sequels that it followed. It's not a great movie, or even really a good movie. But when taking it for what it is, as the sixth movie in a movie studio's cash cow horror franchise, it's not bad. And judging it as such, I'll give it three and a half stars. It isn't the best of the sequels, but it does throw a much-needed speed bump in the downturn the Saw franchise had been taking. It's at least the best entry into the second trilogy. And if it is successful at anything, it definitely made me want to see Saw VII in October.

Final Rating: ***½