Saw 3D is a 2010 American horror film by Kevin Greutert, the seventh Saw entry and the original series finale.
At a Glance
- Director: Kevin Greutert
- Writers: Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan
- Cast: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Sean Patrick Flanery, Cary Elwes, Chad Donella, Gina Holden
- Release: October 29, 2010 (United States and Canada)
- Runtime: 90 minutes
- Studio: Twisted Pictures, distributed by Lionsgate
- Franchise: Saw franchise
- Also known as: Saw: The Final Chapter
Overview
By 2010 the Saw series had been released every Halloween for seven straight years, and Lionsgate decided the seventh would be the last. Saw 3D had to do a great deal at once: settle the feud between Jill Tuck and Detective Mark Hoffman, answer the question fans had asked since 2004 about Dr. Lawrence Gordon, and justify a premium 3D ticket. The result is the most crowded film in the franchise, a race through several storylines at once that ends with a callback to the very first bathroom. It was also, at least for seven years, the conclusion of the story that began with Saw.
Plot
The film opens with a flashback: Dr. Gordon, having sawed through his own foot years earlier, crawls out of the bathroom and cauterizes the wound on a steam pipe. In the present, a public trap plays out in a shop window. Two men are chained to buzz saws, with the woman who has been playing them against each other hung above a third. Realizing they have been used, the men refuse to kill each other and leave her to the blade.
Jill Tuck, who survived Hoffman’s attack at the end of Saw VI, goes to internal affairs detective Matt Gibson and offers to testify against Hoffman in exchange for protection. Hoffman, meanwhile, keeps playing, now with little of John Kramer’s philosophy left in him.
The central game belongs to Bobby Dagen, a self-help author who has built a book tour and support group on his story of surviving a Jigsaw trap. The story is a lie. Bobby wakes in an abandoned asylum with an hour to rescue his wife, Joyce, who is chained above a trap and made to watch his progress. Along the way he must try to save his publicist, his lawyer and his best friend, each of whom helped him sell the fake survival story. He fails them all. Gibson eventually traces the game, but his SWAT team is gassed, and Hoffman, who has smuggled himself into the police station in a body bag, cuts through the building to reach Jill.
Spoiler: The Ending
Bobby’s last test is to repeat the stunt he lied about, hanging his own weight from hooks driven through his chest. The hooks tear free, and Joyce dies inside a brass bull. Hoffman finds Jill and kills her with the original reverse bear trap, then destroys his workshop and prepares to leave. Three figures in pig masks stop him. One is Dr. Gordon, who reveals that he has been working for John Kramer since he escaped, and that John asked him to act if Jill was ever harmed. Gordon drags Hoffman to the original bathroom, chains him to the pipe, tosses the hacksaw away and shuts the door with the words “Game over.”
Production
Lionsgate announced Saw VII in July 2009 with David Hackl, director of Saw V, attached. Melton and Dunstan had planned two more films, but after Saw VI underperformed the studio allowed only one, so ideas from a projected eighth entry were folded into this script. In January 2010, Twisted Pictures replaced Hackl with Kevin Greutert, who had directed Saw VI and was preparing Paranormal Activity 2 for Paramount. Twisted invoked a clause in his contract, and Greutert arrived two weeks before cameras rolled and reworked the script. The film was shot in Toronto between February and April 2010 using RealD 3D, on a reported budget of $17 million.
Place in Franchise
Saw 3D brings the series full circle by reviving its first protagonist and locking the last villain in its first set. Its focus on Bobby, a man profiting from a fake Jigsaw story, also takes a swipe at the culture the franchise itself created. Reviews were largely negative, yet the film grossed about $136.2 million worldwide. The series returned seven years later with Jigsaw, and the story of John Kramer continues to be told in prequels and spin-offs.
Trivia
- It was marketed in some territories as Saw: The Final Chapter.
- Linkin Park singer Chester Bennington plays Evan, a victim in the junkyard trap.
- Tanedra Howard returns as Simone, the survivor she first played in Saw VI after winning the reality competition Scream Queens.
- Gordon’s return answered one of the longest-running fan questions in the series.
- Writer Patrick Melton said Saw: Endgame was once considered as a title.
- Greutert, an editor on earlier Saw films, directed both the sixth and seventh entries.