Saw III opens with quick vignettes of two people dying due to Amanda's efforts to live up to Jigsaw's reputation. They have very little to do with the rest of the story, so it's almost as if the filmmakers are offering up tasty appetizers to perk up bloodthirsty moviegoers' palates.
And indeed, blood and gore, pain and death are worshiped here. Choruses of screams serve as the soundtrack. Limbs are severed. Bones are crushed. Bodies are hewn. Heads are blown apart. All the bloody results are shown with brutal clarity. Between flashbacks to previous torture scenes in the first two films and an obsessive dedication to delivering new material, it's a wonder the film didn't run three hours straight.
The woman in the freezer dies as she's slowly encrusted with ice which forms from water that's sprayed onto her. A man nearly drowns in the "juice" generated by a machine pulverizing animal carcasses. Another's head is blasted half off with a shotgun. Acid eats into a police detective's hand when she's forced to fish a key out of it. Spread-eagled on a rack of sorts, Jeff's primary "opponent" in his game screams and writhes as his arms and legs and finally his head are slowly twisted off his body. Two women are shot. Both gush blood. A man's throat is ripped open with a circular saw. Another chops off his own appendages. Amanda suffocates a man with plastic. She and another victim battle it out with such implements of destruction as metal poles. She repeatedly stomps on the stump of his severed leg. Kidnappings and imprisonments include that of a young girl.
Operating on Jigsaw, Lynn cuts and then pulls back his scalp with a pair of pliers. Then she uses a power drill to puncture his skull. And finally a rotary saw to cut out a square. The camera never blinks. But Lynn has toto keep the blood from blinding her. Jigsaw throws up and bleeds from his mouth during a long sequence in which he convulses and nearly dies
Mutilating herself, Amanda uses a large knife to cut long gashes into the inside of her thigh. Lynn shoots holes through a door while trying to kill her abductors.
If Saw III proves anything, then, it is that there is no end to creative and imaginative evil. And there is no end to the ways in which movies can show people being mangled, lacerated, dissected, brutalized ... and murdered.
