The Game Comes Full Circle: Saw VI

SAW 6 (DVD)
Lionsgate

Release date: March 8th, 2010
Certificate (UK): 18
Running time: 88 minutes

Year of production: 2009

Directors: Kevin Greutert
WriterS: Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan

Cast: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Mark Rolston, Peter Outerbridge and Shawnee Smith

Saw 6 Official Movie Site
Saw: The Final Chapter Blu-ray Review

The horror franchise that refused to die, until last year, churned out 6 sequels since it first tore its way into horror film history with the terrifying and unique Saw (2004).

What began with two guys waking up in chains in an abandoned building with a dead body lying across from them, turned into an ingenious story with a twist ending to rival even The Sixth Sense (1999). But where would it go from there and how could they continue to not only repeat but outdo the financial success and creativity we saw in that first film?

With each subsequent Saw, what began to unfold was a complex story of a man who set out to teach society a lesson about the value of life. By targeting those who slipped through the cracks of the justice system, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) began to execute a brutal revenge on those he blamed for his wife’s miscarriage. When the torch was passed onto his accomplices, those motives were replaced by something else. In the case of Lieutenant Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), it turned into pure murder and with Saw VI, it leads to more murders as he tries to cover up his tracks.

It picks up exactly where Saw V left off. With Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) now dead, Hoffman gets to work framing him as Jigsaw’s apprentice. Unfortunately, Agent Dan Erickson (Mark Rolston) begins to follow a hunch that Strahm is being set up and that Jigsaw’s accomplice is still at large. With Agent Lindsey Perez (Athena Karkanis) surviving the events of Saw V, Hoffman knows that it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable happens.

Meanwhile, a new game is set in motion. This time it revolves around William Easton (Peter Outerbridge), an executive for A health insurance firm that’s been saving its own neck instead of looking after the best interest of its clients. Easton is given a series of opportunities to save people he knows by weighing up moral dilemmas that first year Philosophy students will no doubt be familiar with. For examples, should he save his filing clerk who has no relatives or his elderly secretary who has a family? Other choices are not so clear though, such as when he finds six staff members chained to a spinning carousel, with a shotgun positioned in front of them.

As the game progresses we will find out what Jigsaw’s master plan was all about and how Easton fits into the puzzle, but while all of that is going ON, the clock continues to count down for Hoffman. The surviving agents try to unscramble one of the tapes left behind, if they do, the game will be up for him. There’s also Jigsaw’s widow, Jill Tuck (Betsy Russell), who is desperate not only for the games to end, but to get out of it without anyone knowing of her involvement.

The finale is a pulse racing one as we see the return of reverse beer trap that was featured in the first movie when we met Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), although it would take another film for us to see finally used to its full effect.

With its reflection on the 2008 economic crisis, Saw VI adds a new layer that we were yet to see in the series, but as it mixes buckets of gore with moral dilemmas, it retains what fans have come to love about the franchise.