Saw VI (2009)

Directed by Kevin Greutert

Written by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton 

Unrated. Also available in a rated version, which was rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and language.

This film has also been reviewed by my good friend Sean Hanson. To read his equally informative (and perhaps funnier) review, go here.

As avid fans of the "Saw" series, my wife and I were masochistically excited about seeing the new entry in this explosively gory series. It was only after watching one of the film's early victims cut pounds of flesh out of his gut with a cleaver that we realized "Saw VI" and sausage pizza were not an ideal pairing.

The "Saw" series is based on the premise that "Jigsaw" aka John Kramer builds deathtraps to teach society's scumbags the errors of their ways. Kramer (Tobin Bell) was a terminally-ill man who sought to teach the thankless masses to stop taking their lives for granted. Though his machines serve to torture, maim and horrify, Jigsaw's philosophy centers on a certain archaic notion of justice. He has designed each of his traps to be deadly, but survivable, in order to push his victims to their limits and determine who wants life badly enough to deserve it. Though Jigsaw himself died in the fourth movie, he's left a powerful living will which continues to be executed after his death.

The "Saw" series has grown to include several apprentices to Jigsaw's throne of gore. This was necessary not only to keep the series interesting through so many sequels, but because Kramer's weakening condition (and later death) would prevent him from setting up his elaborate death traps by himself. His first apprentice was a heroin addict named Amanda (Shawnee Smith) who successfully gave up her addiction after being victimized by Jigsaw in the first "Saw". She became a grateful apprentice to Jigsaw, wearing a distinctive pig mask while capturing victims for Jigsaw's "games". As the series wore on, Amanda was killed off and replaced by Detective Hoffman, (Costas Mandylor) who is essentially a copycat killer, using Jigsaw's persona to both fulfill Jigsaw's last wishes, and to execute his own sense of justice. His status as an investigator in the Jigsaw murders allows him near unlimited access to police information on the killings. Hoffman uses this information to stay one step ahead of the police, planting misleading clues to sabotage the investigation.

"Saw VI" begins where "Saw V" ends: Detective Hoffman is in one of Jigsaw's death traps with Agent Strahm, another law enforcer assigned to the Jigsaw case. There is a glass cage in the center of the room which Jigsaw claims is Hoffman's only hope of escape. Hoffman must trust Jigsaw with his life in order to survive. Hoffman climbs into the cage to escape death, leaving Agent Strahm to be crushed to death when the room's walls close in. When the trap resets, freeing Hoffman, he's left the heir apparent of Jigsaw's legacy of death.

John Kramer has been dead for a while now, and his belongings are finally released to his only living relative, his ex-wife Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell). Jill has been mentioned a bit in previous films, most importantly a flashback in which a pregnant Jill (then still-married to John) miscarries when a pair of addicts try to rob the clinic she works at. Her miscarriage is one of the key events that triggered John Kramer's murderous rampage, but Jill herself is not outwardly a "true believer" in his work. Nevertheless, Kramer has left Jill a box to be opened in the event of his death which contains six envelopes. The envelopes outline Kramer's "unfinished business", instructions for the abduction and entrapment of the enemies Kramer failed to punish before his death.

This brings me to my favorite part of "Saw VI", the victims. The "theme" for this film's victims is "insurance employees". I was unfortunate enough to spend a little bit of time in the insurance business. In the short time before I quit, I was instructed by slimy suit-wearing jerks to exploit the fears of potential customers in order to sell them policies. This experience left me with little love for people who do this for a living. The insurance employees of "Saw VI" are even worse. The main protagonist, William Easton (Peter Outerbridge) is an insurance number-cruncher who is responsible for the formula which determines who gets health care (lives) and who doesn't (dies). He oversees a team of six vicious insurance reps whose sole job is to find discrepancies in customers' applications in order to deny payment of claims. In one particularly maddening scene, a man with a terminal heart condition is denied claim payment because he had minor oral surgery years ago that he didn't disclose on his insurance application. Easton's team uses this minor, accidental oversight to void his coverage under the "preexisting conditions" exemption, claiming that his surgery may have contributed to the man's heart disease.

Hoffman turns the tables on Easton, bringing him face to face with the murderous outcome of his mathematical choices. As an insurance agent, Easton's choices had condemned men to death by denying them much-needed medical coverage. Jigsaw's maze of death forces Easton to make the same kinds of evaluative decisions while looking in the faces of the people he must condemn.

Hoffman's Jigsaw doesn't share John Kramer's lofty ideals. He is not above involving innocents as long as it teaches his primary victim a lesson. Indeed, many of the victims in "Saw VI" are little more than props with which to manipulate William Easton's emotions. Several of his insurance coworkers are set up to die unless Easton is willing to make personal sacrifices to save them. Formerly a man of passive, methodical decision-making, Easton is forced to take personal responsibility for the lives he affects.

The series had notably flagged since the first film. The deathtrap setup wasn't nearly as new and exciting when fans knew what to expect, so the series' writers began tweaking the formula in an effort to produce the same kind of intelligent plot twists that made the first film so special. Unfortunately this resulted in several chaotic, confusing messes of plot-threads that only weakly held together otherwise random scenes of creative cruelty. In my opinion, "Saw VI" is the first Saw film since "Saw" to give due attention to plot development, and does a fair job of wrapping up the loose ends left by the writers of the earlier sequels. The film features many flashbacks which reach back through the series and reinterpret the events of previous films based on our knowledge of what's happened since. These scenes seem to invite the viewer to rewatch the first five films in order to understand more fully where the flashbacks fit in the larger plot puzzle. After seeing number six, I am definitely eager to rewatch one through five.

I gave "Saw VI" an 8/10. It is not as good as the first "Saw", but is one of the best sequels. Peter Outerbridge gives a great performance as William Easton (fantastic when you consider the challenge of some of the situations he's play-acting). Costas Mandylor plays Detective Hoffman as bluntly menacing. No great acting on his part, but his hulking physical presence carries with it the ever-present threat of violence. Series alumni Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith continue to play their characters (exclusively in flashbacks, since both characters are dead) with admirable panache. Though I'm sure they will make a "Saw VII", this may be the last film for these original cast members. People who dislike depictions of demented, painful, bloody deaths and cruelty will not enjoy this film under any circumstances, but even if you are a gore-hound like me, I suggest you do not watch "Saw VI" while eating.













I also recommend:

Let the Right One In (2008)

aka: Låt den Rätte Komma In (Sweden)
Directed by Tomas Alfredson
Written by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Rated R for some bloody violence including disturbing images, brief nudity and language.

"Let the Right One In" is without a doubt a new landmark in the vampire genre. Swedish director Tomas Alfredson's imdb.com page lists him as having 29 film-related awards and 6 nominations. It's no surprise that the majority of these are for one film, "Let the Right One In".

This is clearly Alfredson's masterpiece, a dark and melancholic post-modern coming-of-age story in which Oskar, a young boy plagued by bullies, meets and falls for Eli, a young girl who has moved into the apartment next door. There is a strong love story here, but not a remotely traditional one. Eli is a vampire. Though she inhabits the body of an twelve-year-old girl, as she tells Oskar "I've been twelve for a long time."

In spite of being a story that centers around two twelve-year-olds, "LtROI" is a more adult film than one might initially suspect. Eli is a vampire. Not one of these new-age glampire sparkly freaks, but an old-fashioned creature of the night. She needs to feed, and does so several times throughout the film. The gore is mostly suggested, and the few images of death we are shown are tasteful and well-done enough not to offend most viewers' sensibilities. Eli is an apologetic vampire. She has to eat, but she doesn't hate people. In Oskar, she finds someone who can love her in spite of her condition.

Oskar is not without his own violent tendencies. When Eli first meets him, he's stabbing a tree in the courtyard of his apartment complex at night, telling it to "Squeal like a pig!" Though clearly a good enough kid, Oskar's obsession with death and violence is apparent from very early in the film. Perhaps it is this obsession that allows him to overlook Eli's murderous nature. Oskar doesn't come easily to peace with Eli's vampirism, but gradually comes to see that she is more human than most of the humans in his life.

Speaking of other humans, the ones with the most screen-time are the group of bullies that torture Oskar at school. Not since "The Karate Kid" have grade-school bullies been so mean. Luckily, the bullies here are portrayed a bit more realistically than in "The Karate Kid". One boy is the de facto "leader" of the bully troop, and three meeker boys do his evil bidding. The meeker boys inspire almost as much sympathy as Oskar. One of the boys even cries to himself while whipping Oskar with a stick. It was nice to see movie bullies with depth and remorse.

The love story develops quickly into an adult one, however asexual. Eli sneaks in Oskar's bedroom window at night and lies next to him, naked in bed. Though a child, Oskar clearly has a sense of what it means to be a man in the modern world, and what it means to love a woman. His modesty in the face of Eli's openness is adorable, and makes the couple all the more sympathetic.

I rate "Let the Right One In" a 10/10. The cinematography is top-notch throughout and effectively showcases the snowy, desolate suburbs of Sweden as the film's picturesque backdrop. The acting, visuals, music and dialogue are all very well done. Most importantly, this film pushes the limits of what's been done before with vampires. Vampire-human love stories are a dime a dozen, but this one seems somehow timeless. I recently re-watched this one with some friends, and it stands up well to a second viewing. I strongly reccomend this film to anyone with eyes to see, a heart to feel, and a neck to bite!

I also recommend:















***!!!SPOILERS BELOW, CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!***





As I was writing this review, I realized something about the film that I hadn't before. At the start of the movie, Eli has a caretaker, an old man who kills people in order to bring back blood for her. He scars his face with acid to hide his identity when he's captured by police trying to drain someone, and is ultimately killed by Eli to end his misery.

At the end of the film, Oskar is travelling on a train with Eli, presumably to start some kind of a life together somewhere.

Eli's caretaker's relationship to her is unknown. On first viewing, I suspected he was her human father, but after watching it again and thinking about it, I suspect that he was a love interest that Eli became attached to when he was young, perhaps as young as Oskar. This would imply that Eli operates cyclically, cohabiting with a human caretaker for the course of their human lifespan, and then grooming a new one as a replacement when the old one dies or gets captured. Not only does this explain more about Eli's strange, strained relationship with her old caretaker, it suggests what Oskar and Eli's relationship will become as he grows old and she remains a child. I need to watch the film again with this in mind, but this reading seems to add a lot of depth to the story. I would raise my rating of this film to reflect this new discovery, but a 10/10 is already a perfect score. Bravo!