Saw 3D

Watching the seventh and (allegedly) final instalment in the long-since enervated ‘Saw’ series is like pulling your own teeth out, while watching yourself on a giant 3D screen and being force-fed deafening, discordant music.

A series of self-help groups filled with Jigsaw survivors has coalesced around Bobby Dagen, a publicity-hungry author whose book detailing his own ordeal at the hands of the cruel puppet-master is a best-seller. But the inheritor of Jigsaw’s mantle, corrupt detective Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), knows Bobby’s secret – a secret he has kept even from his beloved wife Joyce (Gina Holden). Bobby never was a victim; but now he is about to become one. The trap has been set, and he joins the other disposable victims in trying to escape from the intricately designed engines of pain that are designed to give them a new perspective on life. Meanwhile, Internal Affairs investigator Gibson (Chad Donella) and his team are closing in on Hoffman, who’s been shopped by Jigsaw’s long-suffering widow, Jill (Betsy Russell).

The plotting and characterisation are thin, the set-piece torture scenes are elaborately dull, and the 3D images add nothing but another level of fuzziness. For completist fans, the one reason to see the series through to its conclusion is an answer to the question: What happened to Dr. Gordon (Carey Elwes), who we last saw crawling away at the end of the first film, his leg sawn off above the ankle? Other than that, there’s nothing that’s new, and there’s far too much that’s old and past its smell-by date. Indeed, a nasty whiff of desperation hangs over the whole enterprise, which started out as a clever puzzle-piece thriller but quickly descended into boring, sadistic horror for its own sake.