Saw: The Final Chapter (2010)

Directed by Kevin Greutert. Starring Sean Patrick Flanery, Chad Donella, Costas Mandylor, Gina Holden, Betsy Russell, Chad Donella, Kim Schraner, Cary Elwes, Naomi Snieckus, Dean Armstrong, Rebecca Marshall, Tobin Bell. [R]

This seventh outing in the seemingly inexhaustible Saw franchise, also known as Saw 3D (because Saw 7D would have been far too ambitious), remains as one-dimensional as the rest, even with a heavier dose of callbacks and self-parody than usual, the latter of which is more than welcome to help cut through the ghastly self-seriousness. Here, while Mandylor and Russell continue their devil dance with one another, a Jigsaw survivor (Flanery) finds himself the target for a sick series of traps after he profited from his sordid celebrity status. As dense, artless, implausible and mean-spirited as any of the other sequels, but the higher body count combined with fewer pretentious monologues and stacked “moral lessons” makes it the most empty-calorie digestible chapter in a while. Gorehounds can rejoice that this is probably as gross as it gets for the franchise, pushing that R-rating to its breaking point (or dismembering point), and if Mandylor got paid by the throat stabbings, he’d be an obscenely rich man. The prologue contains probably the biggest laugh (intentional or otherwise) in the entire series when the Jigsaw puppet eases into frame on his little tricycle to announce his “game,” surrounded by onlookers who somehow didn’t see him until that point. Despite being promoted as the series finale, an additional Jigsaw apprentice is revealed at the end (and maybe more, considering that said person got help capturing the final victim), and after a much-appreciated hiatus, the franchise tried to restart itself in 2017 (Jigsaw). Singer Chester Bennington cameos, and he sure does get a chance to scream. Followed several years later by Jigsaw.

30/100