Every Saw Film Ranked From Worst To Best

Plot: Jigsaw kidnaps a doctor (Bahar Soomekh) to keep him alive while a vengeful man named Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) is put through his own game.

This is the one where the Saw films began to decline, since Saw III mostly abandons the suspense and tragic arcs of the first two films and became largely about the blood and guts instead.

The trap scenes focus almost entirely on pain instead of any suspense, which makes the whole thing exhausting and overly mean-spirited, while the film also misses the point of the first two. The whole premise of the series is meant to be that people who wasted their lives are tested, but Jeff really doesn't deserve to be there at all.

Sure, he'd allowed vengeance to consume him, but come on. He'd lost his child and he was traumatized (just like Jigsaw!). Because it feels like Jeff shouldn't have been tested in the first place, everything to do with his arc feels wildly unearned and this heavily undermines any potential emotional depth in the film (the aforementioned Saw IV had the same problem).

All that being said, the film is kept watchable by good directing, mostly strong acting and some interesting ideas. It is occasionally powerful and one gets the sense that, with a better script that didn't focus quite so much on violence, this could've been a reasonably affecting film. Sadly, it wasn't to be.