The first “Saw” film was pretty revolutionary for a horror film, and created a wider market for what I call “gore-or” films. No longer are these type of gore-filled, blood drenched films only for midnight screenings and limited releases. This created a greater opportunity for filmmakers and audiences to enjoy a crossed boundary that locked a genre that relied on suspense and mystery for so long. That was the first “Saw”. It was interesting and new, and people latched right onto that. Because of this reason, I recently watched “Saw VI”. Yes the sixth iteration into the same storyline, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

Saw VI picks up right after the end of Saw V, and much like the previous five films relied heavily on referring to previous events in the series. I felt the entire time I was watching it, it kept cutting to “remember when this happened” or “oh, remember in the third film when this happened? This was happening too and you never knew about it!” It just seemed like a poor excuse for making new events and old events tie together, eliminating the originality of the first…well at least two films that I enjoyed.

There was another bit of the film that really bothered me. These are spoilers, but they aren’t really because you already know what’s going to happen. The film follows an health insurance executive who denied Jigsaw coverage in his advanced stages of cancer. More so than anything, this film was a revenge flick. His “grand scheme” was that after he died, he was going to KILL his health insurance executive. It was pretty weak-minded, and really took away from the messages of ‘cherish your life’ that the other films promoted.

To make it even worse though, this film put a lot of innocent people into harm’s way. The majority of the main character’s (it’s hard to call him a protagonist) office workers were thrown into these traps where they would certainly be killed. They weren’t there as punishment for the things that they have done, but rather to force the main character into choosing who lives and who dies, like he does for his job. This isn’t fair though, and is counterproductive to Jigsaw’s original messages. Never before has he decided to kill innocent people, even when the traps by his apprentice were rigged to kill the people regardless of being able to get out in time or not.

Overall, the film was better than….oh I don’t know, the last three for sure. But it still was god awful, and because it broke from the message of the first films I have to say that it was a sequel for the sake of a sequel and tarnished the previous entries to the series. I feel stupid even saying that because it sounds like I gave a damn about them in the first place.