Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		3.0
Overall		2.0

Saw: The Final Chapter Blu-ray Movie Review

Game over? We can only hope.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman January 14, 2011

Elvis Presley once famously struck back at critics with an album entitled 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong, and yet there were some cynics amongst us who may have asked, “Why not?” The producers of the Saw franchise may, like Elvis (and/or Elvis’ ghost, depending on whether or not you believe The King has indeed left the building), may be saying, “Can $848 million in box office receipts be wrong?” To which the cynics amongst us may just as dogmatically respond, “Yes.” Is the Saw franchise “torture porn” or “torture horror”? Its creators insist it isn’t, and yet it’s hard to argue that point when every film is filled with some of the most disgusting imagery imaginable of (at least sometimes relatively) innocent people getting stuck in the films’ many signature “traps” and meeting their fates in any number of horrible ways. Some sociologist either has already had or no doubt someday will have a field day trying to explain the psychological reasons people need to actually pay money to sit there and watch other humans get their eyeballs sewn shut, their bodies pummeled and hacked by any number of horrible instruments of pain and destruction, their limbs severed, their intestines spilled, and their heads burst apart like some cranial version of David Letterman's "stupid watermelon" tricks. What is it about these films that so appeals to people? “Basic” horror or thriller films are perhaps easier to understand on a general level; after all, virtually everyone enjoys a good scare now and again. But with films like the Saw franchise, where images are so graphic and the violence and mayhem is so patently unappealing, it really raises some serious questions as to what is going on in peoples’ heads that they willingly subject themselves to these nightmare visions. So take this review with the requisite amount of salt (just don’t get it in any gaping flesh wounds, it will most likely sting). Obviously, I am not just immune to the allure of these films, I find their very existence troubling and disturbing, far beyond their “mere” content.

Saw: The Final Chapter has, for those of us who don’t cotton to this type of sadistic fare, one small saving grace, and that’s a fitful sense of humor about its own genre. Amid the over the top gore and grisliness, there are occasional flashes of at least minimal wit, as in one of the first traps, where two guys are strapped together on a movable saw, above which their shared girlfriend lies dangling, suspended. Jigsaw’s puppet (if you have to ask, don’t) informs the trio that they have a choice—the guys can either fight each other, pushing the saw into the other one, or they can allow the girl to be lowered onto the saw, killing her. The punch line: the guys hadn’t previously known the girl was seeing both of them. And lest it go unmentioned, the trio is doing this all in a mall shop window, to the delight and/or consternation of a slew of people who gather, snapping pictures of the event on their cell phones. This one sequence has a nice mixture of giddiness and horror and actually has a couple of laugh out loud lines along the way. Unfortunately, the rest of the film rarely if ever rises to even this level.

The wonderful sitcom Modern Family just recently had a great episode where the “middle family” of Phil and Claire revealed that they have a love of schlocky movies, especially franchises that get above a third sequel. “Around five or so, you usually get a new cast,” Phil states with delight. Saw of course is well past the five mark, but this Final Chapter attempts to tie up several plot strands that have been woven through the previous installments, including bringing back several characters that were either thought to have perished or whose ultimate fates were never clearly delineated (I’ll try not to “spoil” anything for those of you who may indeed care about these supposed surprises). The problem with the Saw franchise is it’s so insanely twisted (in every sense of those words) by this time, that unless you’ve been a fan from the first film, you’re probably going to be hopelessly lost a lot of the time in this (hopefully) final outing. That said, if you have followed the series all along, or at least have a passing knowledge of the history of various main characters, writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan do a more than serviceable job of serving up various backstories and even a twist or two that some fans will probably find enjoyable, and the ending makes for a nice bookend with the first film.

It’s fairly pointless to talk about performances in a series like this. People scream, moan and terrorize. That’s it. Scares don’t come from anything other than the horror of seeing people with grappling hooks through their shoulders, bear traps on their heads or saws churning through ragged flesh. If this isn’t “torture horror,” I really don’t know what to call it. I suppose that within the confines of something as distasteful as a film like this, director Kevin Greutert stages things fairly effectively, but how much ingenuity does it really take to plop a camera down in front of a prosthetic body that’s about to be sliced and diced into smithereens?

This Saw garnered what little interest it generated from being a 3D feature (and my colleague Martin Liebman will have his review of the 3D Blu-ray up soon), and several of the horror segments were obviously filmed with three dimensions in mind. The problem with something like Saw: The Final Chapter is, no matter what high tech devices are employed in its filming, it’s still resolutely a two dimensional experience, and unfortunately neither of those dimensions is very appealing.

Saw: The Final Chapter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Saw is yet another horror film which so heavily post processes a lot of its image that any assessment of its Blu-ray transfer may be automatically suspect. Delivered via an AVC encode, in 1080p and 1.78:1, Saw: The Final Chapter is largely desaturated, bathed in either yellow or blue for a lot of the film, and wavers between low contrast, moodily dark scenes, and pumped up, overblown contrast moments that rob the film of virtually all fine detail. If you're a fan of this sort of film, you've seen it all before, and this Blu-ray will certainly live up to expectations. Heavily filtered scenes are full of grain and offer robust (usually blue tinged) color. "Normally" lit scenes (and that's definitely a relative term) offer decent enough fine detail and something approaching a natural looking palette. But this is ironically really a strangely bloodless film, from a color standpoint. Even the "real" blood is dirty brown and oddly desaturated. It's a typical technique for films of this ilk, and the Blu-ray reproduces it to a tee, but it means you won't be able to count the hunks of flesh flying out at you from time to time.

Saw: The Final Chapter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Saw: The Final Chapter's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 mix is bombastic and relentless, full of exploding bodies, the ominous sound of buzzsaws and all sorts of foley effects mimicking skin being ripped from bones. If you like that sort of thing, you'll have a field day here with a pretty completely immersive track that offers excellent support of surrounds and at times an overwhelming amount of LFE. In fact, if you divorce the soundtrack from the often hideous images filling the screen, this is actually a fun and involving mix that provides plenty of interest and an at times amazing variety of sound effects. Fidelity is excellent here, and what dialogue there is is placed well and mixed very well into the overall soundfield. Source cues and underscore are also utilized effectively.

Saw: The Final Chapter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

If you care about Saw, there are a few decent supplements on this new Blu-ray:

• Two Commentaries, both rather good, at least in the relative world of the Saw franchise, one featuring producers Mark Burg, Oren Koules and Peter Block, and the other featuring writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan.
• Deleted and Extended Scenes (HD; 13:46) provide yet more gore, along with actual "dramatic" scenes.
• Music Videos (HD; 20:48) offers these Oscar-worthy contendors: Karnivool, "Goliath"; Kopek "Cocaine Chest Pains"; I-Exist, "Pass Out"; Dir En Gray, "Hageshisa To"; Danko Jones, "Full of Regret".
• 52 Ways to Die (HD; 14:15) a featurette reviewing the many traps of the Saw franchise.
• Theatrical Trailer
• DVD Copy and Digital Download for I-Tunes.
• Lionsgate Live offers minimal content via BD-Live.

Saw: The Final Chapter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you're a Saw fan, you're probably wondering what my problem is, and I guess I can't blame you, though of course I'm (jokingly) wondering what your problem is. For you fans of the franchise, this will be a wonderful Blu-ray you will undoubtedly "enjoy," for what that's worth. For the rest of us, this is about as distasteful a film as I can remember, and not just because of the gratuitous violence and gore. The first couple of Saw films at least seemed relatively fresh, even if they were extremely disturbing. Now it's just same old, same old, and even the twists and turns of this supposedly final chapter can't alleviate the slog this film is. For those of you who are more prone to my point of view, let's hope The Final Chapter lives up to its title.