Make Your Choice pt. 3

An in depth look at the Saw Series

“How much blood will you shed to stay alive?”

John Kramer (Saw 3)

Continued from Make Your Choice pt. 2

I have to say that Saw 5 is my favorite movie in the whole series for all of the reasons. The only thing that could have possibly made Saw 5 better was killing detective Hoffman instead of Amanda in Saw 3 and making Amanda the center of the rest of the films, but overall Saw 5 was great. The Game was great, the traps were excellent and the people in the traps were actually competent and made smart choices rather than screaming the whole time.

Saw 5 is the Saw movie to watch if you want to see a classic Jigsaw game. There are five people stuck in a series of rooms and in theory they could all escape the traps alive. This is not how the movie goes of course, but Jigsaw does hint along the way about how the survivors could all work together and survive. The main goal of this game is to teach these five people how to work with others rather than stepping on anyone and everyone to get what they want. The reason they’re all there is because they all played a part in a terrible fire that killed several people. Only two people survive the traps as a result of their selfishness, however when they reach the last trap they realize how the Game could have gone and are both able to escape.

This is my favorite Game played because the people aren’t stupid, and it shows how if they had really thought about what Jigsaw was telling them everyone could survive. That being said, it is not the only reason this is my favorite Saw movie.

When the movie does not focus on the Game being played, it focuses on Detective Hoffman who is attempting to frame Agent Strahm for the Jigsaw murders. Now Agent Strahm escaped his trap from Saw 4 and realized that it was actually Hoffman who was Jigsaw now, but he needed proof, so he went off the grid. Hoffman used this to frame Strahm and then put Strahm in another trap which he was unable to escape from due to his own stupidity.

Overall I thought it was very clever of Hoffman to frame Strahm, and that combined with the Game that was played really makes Saw 5 my favorite of the Saw movies.

Saw 6, while not my favorite, is in a similar boat to Saw 3, where I like it but it’s got a few problems.

There was a pretty good game played in Saw 6, it actually had another of my favorite traps. However, a lot of the game was centered around a guy who worked in insurance choosing who lives and who dies, which as we have already discussed is not one of my favorite things. In addition the end of Saw 6 is messy and I’m not a huge fan of how things played out.

Overall it was hard to sympathize with the insurance guy because he actually had a chance to escape the game. A lot of people that Hoffman (Jigsaw) put in there didn’t even have a chance. They had to hope that Insurance guy didn’t choose to kill them, which I found to be obnoxious. What was cool though was that when John Kramer (OG Jigsaw) died he left Hoffman and his wife (Jill, who was pretty irrelevant until now) instructions for a new game (the game played by insurance guy). This is about the only redeeming quality of Saw 6 because it had the potential to be super cool, but they really ruined it.

Basically Insurance Guy eventually died because the family of a guy who he denied insurance decided they wanted to kill him, a ton of other people died because Insurance dude wasn’t a nice man and then Jill tried to kill Hoffman but she’s pathetic and she failed.

In my opinion they should have had Jill succeed and continue where her husband left off, but okay don’t do that I guess.

The only slightly redeeming quality of Saw 6 was the carousel trap. Basically there was a shotgun pointing at a carousel with six people on it. Every time the carousel stops, the shotgun will fire, unless Insurance dude stops it. However, Insurance dude can only stop the gun from firing twice, so four of the six people on the carousel will die. I like the trap because it was such a cool concept and it was done pretty well. The fact Insurance dude chose who lived was annoying, but it did teach him something so I guess it’s fine.

As you may have guessed this is to be continued with Saw The Final Chapter and Jigsaw coming up next…

“Live or die, make your choice.”

John Kramer (literally every Saw movie before every trap ever)