SAW III (2006)

Third time's a charm? we'll see about that.
Another October brought us yet another SAW film, this film was released with a guaranteed fourth, which left some of the suspension a bit moot, however the actual story is probably as creative as the first.

Jigsaw (reprised by Tobin Bell) is sick, and so he must apprehend Doctor Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) A woman who is seemingly unappreciative of her husband and family, but as ever, there's more reason to her being here. While Jigsaw is being treated by the good doctor, we're flung between the current "player" Jeff (Angus Macfadyen), who is unable to move on from his son's death, causing him to pay no attention to his wife and daughter, Jigsaw pit's him against various people involved in and around his son's tragic "hit and run" passing. the film concludes with a bigger twist than II, but not a scratch on the original, again giving us the dilema of choice, with the moral being "Let go".

Series creators (and executive producers) James Wan and Leigh Whannell return to co-write with Director Darren Lynn Bousman. Creative and devilishly clever in places, there are some people in these traps featured in III that have little to no control over their fate, something that seems to go against the point of Jigsaw's motivation, the film in the end becomes partly a tale of loss and the breakdown of a family unit, hitting some emotional highs while bringing it all together in the final act.

Conclusion: The clever plot is brought down only by some of the shaky performances and seemingly unmotivated actions of some of the characters, it does it's job, and ties into it's successor beautifully. 7/10

SAW II (2005)

So begins the slew of sequels, following hot on the heals of the first, SAW II was released just a year later, in many ways it was the original SAW film in the sense that it set the template for the rest, and features the traps and "players" in equal measure as Jigsaw and his accolades.

Instead of a measly 2 guys, directer/co-writer Darren Lynn Bousman teams up with original screenwriter Leigh Wannell to bring us a roster of 7 people, each seemingly with a dark past, once the game begins the heat is on to find a cure to the nerve gas being pumped into them through the ventilation system, while outside the house we finally see Jigsaw being "caught", but is that all it seems?
we see Jigsaw<(Tobin Bell) having a back and fourth with Cop Eric Mathews (Donnie Wahlberg, brother of Mark) and discover that Mathews' son is one of our house-mates. connections between the group start to become apparent, but it is not until the end we find out how important Eric was to the rest of the group.

While lacking the first's claustrophobic nausea, the second one does spread it's wings a little, the victims had a chance to explore their surroundings, and a sort of anti-group dynamic was allowed to form, no time for love interests or comradery, these people seem to be more interested in saving themselves. that said, given the bigger scope of the film it brought with it the negatives that would plague the remaining sequels, the more technical something is the more variables there are, and a lot of what the group do or decide appears to be way too circumstantial.

Conclusion: though in contention for the best of the sequels, it can't match up to the first for depth, emotion of confinement, but we still see basic and believable traps at work (for example the pit of syringes.... *shudders*), whereas in later films everything starts looking like over-mechanical uber-traps are the only devices to hand. 6/10.