Saw 3D

Saw 3D
The poster shows a giant statue in the likeness of the Jigsaw Killer, as portrayed by Tobin Bell, under construction in an industrial area. The top caption reads, "The Final Chapter". The bottom reads the title, "Saw 3D" and the tagline, "This October The Traps Come Alive In Real-D 3D", is under it. Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Kevin Greutert
Produced by	Gregg Hoffman Oren Koules Mark Burg
Written by	Patrick Melton Marcus Dunstan
Starring	Tobin Bell Costas Mandylor Betsy Russell Sean Patrick Flanery Cary Elwes
Music by	Charlie Clouser
Cinematography	Brian Gedge
Edited by	Andrew Coutts
Production company	Twisted Pictures
Distributed by	Lionsgate Films
Release dates	October 28, 2010 (2010-10-28) (United Kingdom and Australia) October 29, 2010 (2010-10-29) (United States)
Running time	90 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$17 million
Box office	$136.1 million

Saw 3D (also known as Saw: The Final Chapter or Saw 3D: The Final Chapter) is a 2010 American 3D horror film directed by Kevin Greutert, written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, and starring Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Sean Patrick Flanery,Cary Elwes and a guest appearance by Linkin Park member Chester Bennington. It is the seventh and final installment of the Saw franchise, and the only film in the series to be in 3D.

The film focuses on a man who falsely claims to be a Jigsaw survivor, becoming a local celebrity. However, he soon finds himself part of a real Jigsaw game where he must ultimately save his wife. Meanwhile, Jill Tuck reveals to an internal affairs officer that rogue Detective Mark Hoffman is the man responsible for the recent Jigsaw games, and Hoffman hunts her down.

An eighth installment was planned, but the decrease in the box office performance for Saw VI compared to previous installments led to Saw 3D being the final planned film in the series, and the plot concept for Saw VIII being incorporated into Saw 3D. Saw V director David Hackl was to direct the film, but two weeks before filming Lionsgate announced that Greutert, who directed the sixth film, would direct. Principal photography took place in Toronto, Ontario from February to April 2010 and was shot with the SI-3D digital camera system, as opposed to shooting with traditional cameras and later transferring to 3D in post-production.

Saw 3D was originally scheduled to be released on October 22, 2010, but was pushed back a week to October 29, 2010 in the United States and Canada; it was released a day earlier in the United Kingdom and Australia. Saw 3D opened at number one making over $22.5 million.

Plot

Two men, Brad and Ryan, wake up in a metropolitan storefront window. Each man is bound at the wrists to opposite side of a worktable with a circular saw in front of them. Their mutual lover, Dina, is suspended above a third saw. As a crowd gathers and police attempt to break the window, a puppet informs the men that one of them can kill the other or they can let Dina die. They initially fight each other, during which Brad is cut, but they soon realize Dina's betrayal and allow her to die instead.

Having witnessed Mark Hoffman survive his trap, Jill Tuck goes to Matt Gibson, an internal affairs detective at Hoffman's precinct, and incriminates Hoffman in exchange for protection and immunity from prosecution. Meanwhile, Hoffman abducts a skinhead gang - Dan, Evan, Jake and Kara - and places them in a junkyard trap that kills them all. He leaves the reverse bear trap at the scene to incriminate Jill, who Gibson puts in protective custody. After a gathering of Jigsaw survivors - including Lawrence Gordon, who cauterized his leg on a steam pipe after escaping the bathroom - takes place, Hoffman abducts Bobby Dagen, a self-help guru who falsified a game survival story for fame and fortune, and brings him to an abandoned asylum. He sends Gibson videos with cryptic clues to the game's location, promising to end the games if Jill is given to him.

Dagen awakens in a cage and is informed that his wife Joyce will die if he doesn't save her within sixty minutes. Joyce is chained at the neck to a steel platform that gradually pulls her closer to the ground, while watching Dagen's progress. After he escapes the cage, which dangles over a floor of spikes, he begins searching for Joyce. Along the way, he finds Nina, his publicist; Suzanne, his lawyer; and Cale, his co-conspirator and closest friend. All three are in separate traps representing the three wise monkeys(see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil) and are killed despite his efforts to save them. After removing his upper wisdom teeth to obtain the combination for a security door in his way, he finds Joyce and is forced to reenact the trap he claimed to survive: he must drive hooks through his pectoral muscles and hoist himself up to the ceiling to deactivate her trap. He fails and is forced to watch as a brazen bull capsule closes around Joyce and incinerates her.

Gibson eventually discovers the game's location and sends a SWAT team, who are sealed in another room and killed by toxic gas. At the same time, he and two officers infiltrate Hoffman's command center in the junkyard. He finds Dan's corpse in front of several monitors connected to the police headquarters security cameras and sees Hoffman brought into the morgue in a body bag. As he calls Palmer to warn everyone, an automatic turret gun rises and kills him and his men. Hoffman kills Dr. Adam Heffner as well as Palmer and everyone else in his path to Jill. She briefly escapes Hoffman, but is quickly caught and knocked out. He straps her to a chair and locks the original reverse bear trap to her head. She wakes up as the timer sets and is killed after sixty seconds. He then returns to his workshop, which he douses in gasoline and sets on fire, destroying it.

As he leaves, Hoffman is attacked and subdued by three pig-masked figures. The leader removes his mask and reveals himself to be Lawrence Gordon. It is shown that John Kramer found him unconscious by the steam pipe and nursed him back to health. Gordon has helped Kramer in secret ever since, known only to Jill, who delivered a package to him at the hospital which contained instructions from Kramer to watch over her and take action if anything happened to her. To this end, Gordon brings Hoffman to the bathroom and shackles him by the ankle next to the skeletons of Adam Stanheight and Zep Hindle. He tosses the hacksaw out of the bathroom, and then turns off the lights and seals the door, leaving Hoffman to die.

Cast

For more details on the cast and characters, see List of Saw cast members and List of Saw characters.

• Tobin Bell as John Kramer
• Costas Mandylor as Detective Mark Hoffman
• Betsy Russell as Jill Tuck
• Cary Elwes as Dr. Lawrence Gordon
• Sean Patrick Flanery as Bobby Dagen
• Chad Donella as Detective Matt Gibson
• Gina Holden as Joyce Dagen
• Dean Armstrong as Cale
• Rebecca Marshall as Suzanne
• Naomi Snieckus as Nina
• James Van Patten as Dr. Heffner
• Chester Bennington as Evan
• Gabby West as Kara
• Dru Viergever as Dan
• Benjamin Clost as Jake
• Sebastian Pigott as Brad
• Jon Cor as Ryan
• Anne Greene as Dina
• Tanedra Howard as Simone
• Olunike Adeliyi as Sidney
• Shauna MacDonald as Tara Abbott
• Greg Bryk as Mallick
• Janelle Hutchison as Addy
• Kevin Rushton as Trevor
• Noam Jenkins as Michael Marks

Production

Development

A scene being constructed at the Metro Hall of Toronto in April 2010.

Variety reported in July 2009 that Lionsgate greenlit Saw VII and announced David Hackl would return to direct, his last film being Saw V. Producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules, and writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan also returned. Brian Gedge replaced series' cinematographer David Armstrong. Pre-production began on September 14, 2009. According to Melton, there were plans to title the film Saw: Endgame. Originally two sequels were planned after the sixth, but in December 2009 Melton stated in a podcast interview with the UK radio station Demon FM that Saw VII was the final installment and would address unanswered questions from previous Saw films, such as the fate of the first film's protagonist Dr. Lawrence Gordon and other Jigsaw survivors from previous films, while bringing a final resolution to the series. The storyline for a Saw VIII was combined into Saw VII; this decision was primarily due to Saw VI's below average box office performance. On July 22, 2010 in an interview with USA Today the producers confirmed that Saw VII will officially end the film series. Burg told Reuters that, "In every Saw movie, we left questions open and in Saw VII we answer every question the audience has ever had". He added that, "even new viewers will be able to follow and get caught up to speed".

In January 2010, Kevin Greutert, who made his directorial debut with the sixth film, was about to begin work on Paramount's Paranormal Activity 2 when Twisted Pictures suddenly dismissed Hackl and forced Greutert on the project by exercising a "contractual clause" in his contract, much to Greutert's dismay. When Greutert arrived on set two weeks before filming began, he performed a "compressive re-write" of the script. Melton explained that, "He has a lot of ideas, but it's a bit hard and extreme to implement all of these ideas because sets have been built, people have been cast, props have been bought or created, and with the Saw films they are so specific in set design because of the traps. It becomes very problematic and difficult to change things a whole bunch right in the middle of it".

Casting

See also: List of Saw characters

Gina Holden (Joyce) at the film's premiere.

Casting began in mid-December 2009. On February 22, 2010, Cary Elwes was listed on the Toronto Film & Television's official list of personnel website for Saw 3D but on March 8 his name along with other cast members were removed from the list. The following month, Lionsgate confirmed his reprisal of the role of Lawrence Gordon, last seen in the first film. Dunstan and Melton said that Elwes filmed new scenes. The filmmakers wanted to bring Elwes back earlier, but Elwes wanted to wait until the last film. He described his character as having Stockholm syndrome. Chad Donella appeared in the film as Internal Affairs Detective Gibson, who was also Hoffman's former partner.

Gabby West, who won the second season of Scream Queens, plays Kara in the film. Chester Bennington, the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band Linkin Park, has a role in the film playing Evan, a white power skinhead. Bennington met with an acting coach to prepare for his role. He said, "It was actually a little more difficult than I expected because it took a lot for me to figure out how to portray this guy and what exactly his motives were going to be throughout. I thought maybe I was overthinking it, and I met with this really great acting coach who helped me walk through and make sense of the, 'Motivation' ". Devon Bostick was offered to reprise his role as Brent from Saw VI, but turned it down due to scheduling conflicts.

Filming in 3D

Saw 3D was shot entirely in RealD 3D using the SI-3D digital camera system; rather than filming on set traditionally and later transferring the footage to 3D. Before choosing 3D, Burg and others viewed a minute of the original Saw film rendered in 3D and were pleased, which led to them choosing 3D for the seventh film. The sets and traps were designed to take advantage of 3D. To continue the fast pace of the previous films, the SI-3D cameras' light weight allowed three-quarters of film to be shot handheld. Saw 3D was Greutert's first time directing a 3D film. He said in an interview with Popular Mechanics that composing a shot in 3D was tricky compared to 2D; he explained, "If you've got both cameras looking at a subject and there's a very bright sheen on the side of the person's arm that only one camera can see, there's a good chance that when you look at a composite of the two images that sheen will not register in 3D space. It looks like a mistake. These things aren't an issue at all in 2D but in 3D are obsessively problematic". Given the cost of filming in 3D, Greutert said the budget was $17 million, the most expensive of the series. Principal photography began on February 8, 2010 in Toronto, Ontario and wrapped on April 12, 2010. Filming took place mostly at Toronto's Cinespace Film Studios.

Saw 3D director Kevin Greutert and his wife, actress Elizabeth Rowin, at San Diego Comic-Con International 2010.

When determining the style of 3D shooting they wanted to use, Burg felt that the audience would want several moments where objects move into the audience, comparing this to My Bloody Valentine 3D. He acknowledged that this method would be used, but expressed an interest in shooting from the victim's perspective, similar to that of first-person shooter video games being rendered in 3D. Dunstan added that "It adds a whole new layer of discipline and criteria to creating these moments. We've had a very flat surface to try to get a reaction out of you. Now, we get to push out a bit and envelop the viewer, still maintaining the patterns that have worked and been successful, but also to raise it up a notch." Commenting on the change to filming in 3D, Bell stated it would not affect his performance or methods of acting, noting that it would be an "interesting experience". Mandylor called the 3D shoot "more tedious and longer". Flannery described the 3D aspect as being "[not] shot in 3D so that you can, per se, see blood coming directly at you. It's in 3D for the texture and the depth, for the architecture, to get a sense that you're in the scene but there's no 'we want to see blood coming at the lens' it's nothing like that. But I think we made a good movie." Post-production services were provided by Deluxe.

Traps

Filming of the trap scenes, which was done last, began in March. The film's opening trap scene was filmed at Metro Hall in Toronto, Ontario, just outside Roy Thomson Hall, and included 400 extras. In the trap, the circular saw blades were actually real and functional, but safety precautions were taken for the actors. One actor that was in the trap, Jon Cor, told Demon FM that he had scars on his hands from the shackles, and said the other actors, Sebastian Pigott chipped his tooth and Anne Lee Greene lost the feeling in her feet and had to receive medical attention.

Producer Oren Koules told horror news website ShockTilYouDrop.com that there are eleven traps in the film, the most ever in the franchise. There is one "trap" scene in the film that producers would not allow in previous Saw films that they described as "too violent", "too disgusting", and "just wrong". Melton later confirmed that was the "Garage Trap", which involved a car and sets off a "chain reaction" with other characters. Gabby West was part of the trap. She told VH1, "They molded my entire face, and basically my entire upper body after my belly button. They put layers and layers of different materials on you and you have two straws in your nose so you can breathe. It was so scary! They put so much of it on, you can't see and they put it in your ears so you can barely hear anything. That was part of the prep for the film, which was really cool, to have a dummy made of yourself. But scary." Over 25 gallons of fake blood was used in the film, which was two and half times more than Saw II.

Music

The film's score was composed by Charlie Clouser and released on iTunes through Evolution Music Partners on November 2, 2010. The Saw 3D soundtrack is "inspired by the film" and features music from rock bands including Dir En Grey, Boom Boom Satellites, Saliva, Krokus, Hinder, Karnivool, My Darkest Days and Chester Bennington's Dead By Sunrise. It was released through SonyMusic Independent Network (SIN) and Artists' Addiction Records on October 26, 2010. The song "Life Won't Wait" by Ozzy Osbourne was announced in the Production Notes, but was not actually played during the film's end credits.

Track listing

Saw 3D Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
No.	Title	Writer(s)	Artist	Length
1.	"Never"	Skidd Mills, Jason Null, Jared Weeks	Saving Abel	2:59
2.	"Condemned"	Chester Bennington, Ryan Shuck	Dead By Sunrise	2:31
3.	"Waking Up the Devil"	Cody Hanson, Brad Warren, Brett Warren, Austin Winkler	Hinder	4:13
4.	"Goliath"	Ian Kenny, Steve Judd, Mark Hosking, Drew Goddard, Jon Stockman	Karnivool	4:38
5.	"Promises"		Nitzer Ebb	3:49
6.	"Love Is Dead"		Kopek (band)	4:02
7.	"Badass"		Saliva	3:04
8.	"The World Belongs To Me"	Dustin Moore, Kevin Rudolf, Chad Kroeger, Joey Moi, Jacob Kasher, Jamaal Sublett, Matt Walst	My Darkest Days	3:42
9.	"Turn It On"	Dave Benedict Danny Craig, Marti Frederiksen, Jeremy Hora, Bob Marlette, Dallas Smith	Default	3:15
10.	"Fire Fly"	Cameron Bailey, Jon Bolotte, Buddy Jackson, Brian Lenington	I-Exist	4:24
11.	"What Goes Around Comes Around"	Michiyuki Kawashima, Masayuki Nakano	Boom Boom Satellites	4:30
12.	"Scream"	Rick DeJesus, Chris Iorio	Adelitas Way	3:33
13.	"Hoodoo Woman"	Marc Storace, Chris Von Rohr, Fernando VonArb	Krokus	3:35
14.	"This Is Heavy Metal"		Lordi	3:01
15.	"Ram The Crush"		Wagdug Futuristic Unity	3:32
16.	"Hageshisa to, Kono Mune no Naka de Karamitsuita Shakunetsu no Yami"		Dir en grey	4:00
Total length:				58:48

Marketing

Bell promoting the film at San Diego Comic-Con International 2010.

On July 8, 2010, in some press materials for San Diego Comic-Con, the film was referred to as Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, which led to the media assuming it was the final name. The following day, Burg and Koules said that "The Final Chapter" was simply a tagline that had been misinterpreted as part of the title. Koules said that if they included the seventh Roman numeral followed by "3D" (Saw VII 3D), it would have been "cumbersome" and not made the impact they wanted. He explained, "It was such a process in 3D, so much hard work was put in. Saw VII 3D is too much. This is like a new movie. [...]"

In the same interview, the producers addressed Saw's presence at Comic-Con 2010 in San Diego. They said that the footage that was going to be used for the convention could not get approved for the audience; Koules explained, "It's going to be different than what we've done before, we're going to be at Comic-Con but we're not in Comic-Con"." The Comic-Con teaser trailer was released via IGN on July 22, 2010. The next day of the convention, the first eight minutes of the film were screened for the press and a few fans.

The trailer shown in the United Kingdom during a break from The Gadget Show was banned after a ten-year-old child complained that it was "distressing" and "inappropriately scheduled". Clearcast had cleared the trailer for 19:00 GMT, but did not actually air until 20:29. In one scene of the trailer, people in a cinema become trapped to the seats by metal restraints with a hand coming through the screen pulling a person in. The Advertising Standards Authority said it was "likely to cause distress to young children". In Massachusetts, a branch of Showcase Cinemas showed Saw 3D instead of the cartoon Megamind, which was being watched by a seven-year-old celebrating a birthday. It took several minutes before the cinema employees fixed the mistake.

Release

Saw 3D was distributed theatrically by Lionsgate in the United States and through Maple Pictures in Canada. The film was originally scheduled to be released on October 22, 2010, but in July 2010, three months prior to release, the date was pushed back to October 29. It also had preview screenings on October 28, 2010 in 2,000 locations. Since the release of Saw IV, each film has been released a day earlier in Australia and New Zealand; Saw 3D continued the tradition in Australia, though the New Zealand release was not released until March 3, 2011. The film was initially rated NC-17 (no children 17 and under admitted) by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and had to be edited and re-submitted six times to secure an R rating. In Australia, the Australian Classification Board gave a heavy R18+ (restricted to 18 and over) for "high impact violence, blood and gore", whereas all previous Saw films were rated MA15+ (with the exception of the director's cut version of Saw V).

Censorship in Germany

Germany banned its showing as a whole because the Amtsgericht Tiergarten has noted that several scenes in the film violate the violence act §131 StGB. Thereby, the film is banned in Germany. Private copies are still legal to own and personal use is not punishable; however any public screening is a highly prohibited and punishable act. There is a censored "Keine Jugendfreigabe/No youth admitted" version, but it has all the violent scenes cut out. Retailing this copy is still legal, since "KJ" rated films cannot be indexed/banned.

Home media

Burg said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on October 25, 2010 that the DVD will only be released in the 2D version. Lionsgate Home Entertainment released Saw 3D: The Final Chapter on January 25, 2011 in three versions. The first is a standard DVD release consisting of the theatrical version of the film, a selection of bonus features and a second disc with a digital copy; a second edition is a 2D combo pack that includes an unrated Blu-ray, DVD and digital copy of the film. The last edition of the release is a 3D combo pack consisting of an unrated Blu-ray 3D, Blu-ray, DVD, and digital copy version of the film. According to the Nielsen VideoScan chart, the DVD and Blu-ray formats placed number three in its first week.

Reception

Box office

Saw 3D had preview screenings on October 28, 2010 in 2,000 locations and made $1.7 million. It opened in wide release the following day in 2,808 locations playing on 3,500 screens, the second smallest release behind the first Saw. The film earned $8,976,000 on its opening day, taking the number one spot from Paranormal Activity 2. It grossed $22,530,123 its opening Halloween weekend, with 92% of tickets coming from more than 2,100 3D-equipped locations and 57% of the audience being under the age of 25. It had the fifth best opening weekend in the Saw series. After only four days of wide release, Saw 3D had out-grossed Saw VI's $27.7 million final domestic gross. On its second weekend, the film dropped 66% in ticket sales and made $7.7 million, moving to the number five spot with Megamind taking its number one spot. Saw 3D closed on December 2, 2010, after 35 days of release in the United States and Canada.

Saw 3D opened in 25 territories with $14.4 million (including preview screenings) placing first place in the United Kingdom (UK) with $5.8 million, beating Saw III's $4.7 million UK opening. It opened in second place in Russia with $2.2 million; Australia and Japan grossed $909,000 and $864,800, respectively. Saw 3D grossed $12.8 million in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Malta; $10.9 million in Germany; $7 million in Italy; $5.3 million in Russia; and $2.4 million in Australia. The film has grossed $45.7 million in the United States and Cinema of Canada, with $90.4 million in other markets, for a worldwide total of $136.1 million. This makes Saw 3D the highest grossing film in the series in the foreign market. Also, it made more than double the amount of the previous installment Saw VI and is the most successful film in the franchise since Saw IV.

Release date (United States)	Budget (estimated)	Box office revenue
		United States/Canada	Other markets	Worldwide
October 29, 2010	$17,000,000	$45,710,178	$90,440,256	$136,150,434

Critical response

Betsy Russell attending the Saw 3D premiere at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on October 27, 2010.

As with the previous four Saw films, Saw 3D was not screened in advance for critics. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a rating of 9%, based on 74 reviews, with an average rating of 3.1/10, making it the poorest rated film in the series. The site's consensus reads, "Sloppily filmed, poorly acted, and illogically plotted, Saw 3D leaves viewers trapped in the most lackluster installment of the series." Metacritic gave the film a score of 24 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".

Luke Thompson of E! Online gave the film a "B". He called the film's gore "over-the-top" and "in your face" while admitting the film had an "unusual amount of self-parody". He said the central storyline of the films was beginning to feel "played out". Rob Nelson of Variety gave the film a negative review. He called the film "relentlessly repugnant" that would please fans, but offer no surprise. He went on to say, "Apart from these limb-pulling setpieces, tech credits appear fairly shoddy, as do any 3D effects that don't include flying viscera. The editing relies on lazy flashbacks, while the dialogue remains as horrific as the killings." Kim Newman of Empire gave the film two out of five stars, calling it "a step down from last year's much more pointed Saw VI". He criticized the repetition of the plot but thought bringing back Jigsaw survivors was a "nice idea". He closed his review with, "There are a scattering of infallibly cringe-making horrors, but on the whole Saw 3D could do with more depth".

Eric Goldman of IGN Movies gave the film two out of five stars. He was unhappy with the little screen time Bell and Elwes had been given, saying that the time the film did spend with them, didn't have much impact. He said the traps were a step down from Saw VI, but did point out his favorite and highlight of the film as the "garage trap". About the film's 3D effects, Goldman said "The 3D is used as you might expect it to be – which is to say, this is no James Cameron immersive experience. Instead, blades jut out of the screen, and there is some fun had with blood and guts literally shooting forward at several points". Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter gave the film a mixed review. He said Saw 3D is "consistent both stylistically and thematically with previous editions", but said most of the film's traps lack the "Rube Goldberg-style cleverness that marked the series". Scheck went on to say that it was "unfortunate" the creators killed Bell's character so early in the series and called Mandylor's character (Hoffman) an "exceedingly bland stand-in". He called the visual impact of the 3D "negligible".

Creators of the Saw franchise, James Wan and Leigh Whannell at the premiere.

Roger Moore of the Orlando Sentinel gave the film one out of five stars saying, "It's all bunk and has been for years. These are all no-win scenarios. Whatever moral lessons were presented in the earliest Saw films seem to have been dispensed with as the movies grow more and more gruesome, with filmmakers caught up in 'What would it look like if somebody's jaw was ripped out, or their skin was glued to a car seat?' Pandering to the 'Cool, let's see that again' crowd has made Lionsgate rich but done nothing for this unendurable endurance contest of this long-enduring film franchise". Mike Hale of The New York Times called the film the most "straightforward" of the series and the "most consistently (though not inventively) violent". He ended his review saying, "If you see the film in a theater equipped with RealD 3D and Dolby sound, you'll come away with a pretty good idea of what it would feel like to have flying body parts hit you in the face".

Elwes reprises his role as Dr. Lawrence Gordon, last seen in the first film, in newly filmed scenes as opposed to flashbacks or archive footage.

Elizabeth Weitzman of the New York Daily News gave the film one out of five stars. She criticized the lack of Bell's screentime saying, "What the filmmakers of the last four Saw movies have somehow overlooked is that Tobin Bell's Jigsaw is the linchpin of these films. It's right there in the title, so you'd think they'd realize what they lost when they killed him off in Saw III. But it's been downhill ever since, and we hit bottom today". She admitted that the performances have become "painfully stilted" and called the script "a jumble of nothing punctuated by barely-trying death traps". She went on to say, "It's also disappointing to watch a once-original franchise morph into a generic slasher series, in which random people are killed in banal ways just to up the body count" and closed her review with, "No matter how much money The Final Chapter makes over Halloween weekend, it's time to acknowledge that this game is over".

Wesley Morris of The Boston Globe called the film the "most gruesome and least coherent of the seven movies". He felt that some of the film's "games" were just randomly forced into the film, saying that kind of "episodic approach" and 3D works for a "far more innovative series like Jackass 3D". Morris closed his review by saying "This alleged final edition trashes the perverse morality of [Jigsaw's] legacy to make him the Jerry Springer of gore". Jason Anderson of the Toronto Star gave the film two out of four stars. He praised Saw 3D's plot for not being as confusing as previous films, for which he described as having to "generally require an encyclopedic knowledge of the series' many plot strands" in order to understand them. He thought Greutert gave the film a "pulpy energy" and described the film's traps and gore as having an "unpretentious sensibility" to films by Herschell Gordon Lewis. Alan Jones of the Radio Times gave the film four out of five stars saying, "though the film initially borders on parody, once the ever-ingenious trapping begins – using fishhooks, superglue, ovens and dental equipment – the chills run on turbo drive right through to the greatest hits flashback finale". He implied that the "shock scenarios" were borrowed from sources such as, A Man Called Horse and the work of Lucio Fulci. Jones said the 3D did not add to the experience saying "the CGI blood splatter something of a distraction to the almost Shakespearean crescendo of anguish and carnage". The film was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award for "Worst Eye-Gouging Misuse of 3D", but it lost to The Last Airbender.

Possible sequel

On November 5, 2013, it was reported that Lionsgate was currently "actively developing" an eighth Saw film. Horror website Bloody Disgusting reported that Lionsgate was seeking a "new direction" for the film, and that the studio is waiting to hear the "perfect take to move forward."

On October 16, 2014, Den Of Geek reported that Saw VIII was a possibility for 2016. In an interview with ShockTilYouDrop, the site quoted producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules' interview regarding the progression of Saw VIII and also the involvement of James Wan and Leigh Whannell. Regarding Wan and Whannell, the article stated that they, "...were so afraid of being the Saw guys. They were trying to make their own mark. They've certainly done that. Wan has moved on to The Conjuring, the Insidious film series, and Furious 7. Meanwhile, Leigh Whannell is in post-production on Insidious: Chapter 3."

"They're very comfortable to come back", Koules continued. "James and Leigh are absolutely going to put their mark on it. It's one of the reasons we agreed to do this again... The plan is to go to Comic-Con, not next summer but the summer after with our heads up saying 'here we go'", adding that now, "everyone has time and it's time".

See also

• List of horror films of the 2010s
• List of 3D films

External links

• Lionsgate page
• Saw 3D at IMDb
• Saw 3D at Box Office Mojo
• Saw 3D at Rotten Tomatoes
• Saw 3D at Metacritic
• Official soundtrack website