He'd always wondered what it meant to be 'boxed 'round the ears'.
All of the taglines I saw for this movie talk about endings and allude to the end happening here. I don't think there were particular plans to make this the last movie, were there? It certainly doesn't feel like it, not even as much as III.
- Take a good look, as it's about at this point that the writers fall in love with Hoffman and decide he has super-powers.
- So Jigsaw locks Strahm in the trap, and cleans him out of all his possessions except his pen. Maybe on some level he wanted Strahm to survive to make things more interesting. Leaving him the pen (and seeing if he has the bottle to tracheotomise himself with it) is a final way to make sure that Strahm is a worthy opponent.
- Because even if that's not his intention, that's sloppy. Even without self-surgery, what's to stop Strahm writing 'Mark Hoffman is the new Jigsaw Killer' on his arm or something? (Remember, Hoffman already suspects that Strahm may know something.)
- All that aside, his 'Say WHA...?' face when he heard there was another survivor was priceless.
- Do you think that the pig masks are used so fans won't have to go to fancy dress as a middle-aged architect if they want to reference the series?
- Why point the police in Lawrence's direction? Or is it just 'away from us'?
- Hoffman is already showing a taste for Amanda-style inescapable traps. Judging from the pendulum trap and the drown-box trap, I'd say that the 'obstacle course' the Fatal Five go through is certainly mostly, if not all, John's design, even if Hoffman did do some of the heavy lifting (literally - remember Kerry?). Hoffman's traps seem very sadistic even when there is a test involved. Despite John's best efforts, Hoffman never really bought into his way of thinking. He was blackmailed into the cause, after all. With John out of the picture, Hoffman may feel a lot less obliged to stick to his philosophy. His killing of Seth suggests a 'going outside the system when it suits me' mentality - not to mention one that just like hurting people.
- I can only assume John recruited him in the first place because he thought it'd be useful to have a police officer on board, but to see him as a worthy successor? Chalk it up to his desperation at the end of his life. Amanda was showing herself to be insufficent for the cause - apart from her doubts in the methods, she shouldn't be left to procure supplies on her own lest John wants traps made out of blancmange and old trainers - so he might have clung to the idea that he'd turned Hoffman around more than he really had. Hoffman may also have been able to present a 'sociopath'-like skill to convince John of what he wanted to see.
- I was going to make a comment about Julie Benz' wig in this film, but if it turned out to be her real hair I'd be very embarrassed.
- The Fatal Five unintentionally worked together to bring about the deaths of eight people, largely due to selfishness. Here, they could save themselves by intentionally working together and making small sacrifices. I like that juxtaposition.
- Though the first room could also have been dealt with even without teamwork, if they'd simply spent less time bickering.
- And all those tubes and saws and cables would've been a waste of time if they had actually been beheaded at the outset, wouldn't they?
- Charles, that is not what 'survival of the fittest' means. (In fact, Brit hits on the correct definition later on, even though she doesn't mention it.)
- In the service of being less vague, 'survival of the fittest' doesn't mean 'survival of the most physically fit, the strongest or fastest' - ie, it's not another way of saying 'might makes right'. It refers to 'survival of the best fit'. Those who are the best fit for, and thereby the best to deal with, a given situation or environment. This might mean strength, smarts, sight, size or anything else that gives you an ability to survive in the place you find yourself. Brit, therefore, got it when she realised that the best fit for this environment was people working together, not clubbing each other to death.
- It seems John spent all his time setting up Jor-El style instructions and bequests for when he was gone.
- Jill's motives are...confusing. When we first met her a couple of movies ago, she seemed to be an ordinary person other than her ex-husband was a serial killer (something she wanted nothing to do with). Now she seems to be kind of rolling her eyes and going along with John/Jigsaw's post-mortem activities (and her knowledge of what he was up to before he died seems a bit back and forth).
- Didn't Erickson say something about not rushing in on your own? Do as he says, not as he does, right, Peter?
- So now entire rooms are actually built, walls, floor and all, to be a trap? With all this money, I'm becoming surprised John couldn't simply pay his cancer to go somewhere else. (To say nothing of his mounting skills and abilities!)
- And if Strahm had ended up in the box? Or simply left the room? Again, I know Jigsaw is the super-analyst and all, but this was a fair gamble with something that would have pretty much screwed things up for Hoffman.
- To last review's experiment with the cassettes, add 'losing five pints of blood and living' as another thing I'm going to take their word for rather than find out empirically.
- I will confess, it's possible that my reaction during the buzzsaw-bleeding scene may have been 'eeeeeeeeeewwww ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow ow'.
- This isn't the first time we've seen splintering bones in Saw. I don't think anyone in this city is getting their calcium. In fact, I can't recall anyone in the whole series drinking a glass of milk. Tut, tut.
The twist:
There isn't the in-your-face twist in this film, though there are many surprises along the way.
The rolling Jigsaw death-count: 30
(Rigg finally drops off in this film (all of a minute later), and we're told that Perez did as well. Three of the Fatal Five buy it, too. And, of course, Strahm becomes Peter pâté at the end. I don't count Seth's murder, because the whole point was that Hoffman was trying to pin that on Jigsaw. And at that point, John was unlikely to take ownership of a copycat killing.)
The accumulating skills and attributes of John 'Jigsaw' Kramer:
Engineer
Surgeon
Surveillance technician
Toxicologist
Property magnate
Philanthropist
Anatomist
Architect
Sound mixer
'Game over.'
None of this either! Maybe we couldn't hear it over the sound of Strahm being squished.
I initially thought of this as an 'OK' entry to the series, but the more I think about it, the adventures of the 'Fatal Five' make for one my favourite 'obstacle courses' in the series. So it could be that bit further up the list just for that.