Saw III 2006

Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle: As the creators of The X-Files learned and the people behind Lost are going to find out soon, you can only jerk around an audience... for so long before they start screaming in frustration and move on to something else. Read more

Steve Tilley, Toronto Sun: Saw III is gross and squirmy, but it's got a lot of brains and heart to go along with its guts. Better than Saw and Saw II combined. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Because of its efforts to make sense of the previous entries and even attempt an earnest parable about forgiveness, Saw III may be the best of the trilogy; hopefully, it'll encourage its makers to wrap the franchise on a relatively high note. Read more

Randy Cordova, Arizona Republic: Even splatter-film buffs should be offended by this piece of nonsense: Not because it's so gross, but because it's so dumb. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: What's remarkable about these movies is how much the craftsmanship degrades with each episode. This is a long, scrambled, indifferently made affair. There's no rhythm to the sequencing. Read more

Michael Ordona, Los Angeles Times: More gore is really all III has to offer. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Admit it: It's not every horror film that can make you feel preached at and slimed at the same time. Read more

John Monaghan, Detroit Free Press: Saw III was not prescreened for critics. It doesn't need to be. The midnight preview I attended last night was packed with folks who don't mind seeing Hollywood beat a dead horse. Read more

Scott Foundas, L.A. Weekly: All told, this is a more affecting study in grief, guilt and human frailty than Babel. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: Ee'll just entertain you by mentioning such extraneous details as a human skull being opened and probed, a naked woman being frozen to death, a man drowning in the ground-up carcasses of dead pigs ... Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: Do you want to play a game? How about a really long, convoluted game that leads nowhere? The scariest thing about Saw III is how it seems like it's never going to end. Read more

Elizabeth Weitzman, New York Daily News: Just like its increasingly wan antihero, this blood-soaked series is on its last legs. Read more

Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel: The premise is bogus to anybody with all their albumen intact. Read more

Jason Anderson, Globe and Mail: Tedium eventually sets in again, the movie's murky visual schema and overly aggressive editing style marring any attempts at subtlety. Worse yet, the Jigsaw Killer remains a smug, unscary bore. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out: The second Saw sequel develops the mythology of sadistic puppet-master Jigsaw in ambitious, gruesome but ultimately self-defeating ways. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Read more

Robert Koehler, Variety: A bigger problem lies with Leigh Whannell's script, which utilizes so many flashbacks and explanatory inserts that the tension, a defining feature of the first Saw, is lost. Read more

Rob Nelson, Village Voice: God or Jack Valenti only knows how this work of pure entertainment got an R rating 'for strong grisly violence and gore, sequences of terror and torture, nudity and language.' Read more