Tag line : Suffering? You haven't seen anything yet...

Picking up shortly after the events of "Saw 2", and the Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell again) is playing another one of his games. But dying from the ravages of cancer he is forced to enlist the help of a nurse named Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) to keep him alive for the duration.

The nurse then finds herself part of Jigsaw's game plan as an explosive collar, which is wired to his heart rate monitor, is placed around her neck and told if he doesn't survive to see the end of the game, neither will she.

The latest "test" in question revolves around a stricken parent named Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) who is forced to confront all the people he feels responsible for the death of his young son and decide whether or not to free them from the sickening torture devices they're strapped to.

With Lynn, aided by one of Jigsaw's former test subjects Amanda (Shawnee Smith again), battling to keep him alive, we are treated to graphic scenes of DIY open skull surgery whilst Jeff wanders round the nearby building, deciding whether or not to rescue people knee dip in pig guts, strapped up in freezers or being stretched to death on racks. But could this rather simple test be part of a much larger game plan?

Definitely the goriest entry in the series (yet), this one caused a bit of uproar in the UK press upon its release in 2006 when people were reported fainting in the cinemas due to its excessively graphic content (that's what happens when ordinary folk go to see horror films to see what all the fuss is about). There's a lot of nice gory scenes, plus there are some further neat twists in the tale. It was also good to see them maintaining continuity by re-introducing Dina Meyer as Detective Kerry and Lyriq Bent, who played SWAT captain Rigg in part 2.

Fans of the series and general horror movie fans will definitely love it.

Overall Marks : 7/10.

Other Information.

• Alternate tag lines "Sometimes Rules Are Meant To Be Broken...", "Like Father, Like Daughter", "To the victor goes the spoils..", "Every game has its loopholes...", "Pain: it's part of the puzzle. Blood: it's the price of freedom. Death: it's not that easy.", "Legends never die", "Do you deserve to live?".

• The films budget was $10,000,000.

• The bathroom set was actually the replica set built for the spoof film "Scary Movie 4", the producers asked if they could film there to save them having to re-build another set.

• This film proved to be the most problematic one in the series yet with the US ratings board. The film makers had to resubmit the film at least 7 times before they would pass it with a R rating.

• "Saw 3" was given the go ahead the morning after "Saw 2" opened.

• Franky G, who played Xavier in Saw 2, flew all the way from New York to the set in Toronto Canada just to do the 2 second shot at the start of the film where you see his dead body on the bathroom set.

• The "pig grinder" scene was inspired by a scene from the Dario Argento film "Phenomenon" where Jennifer Conolly dives into a pit filled with corpses and maggots.

• As with the other films, all the main sets were in one building. Many of the transition shots in this were not actual cuts, they were achieved by the cameraman simply walking through into the next room where the next set was.

• The cut US R-rated version was the same one released to theatres internationally. The DVD release, marked unrated or extreme version, was the original uncut version. There was also a "directors cut" DVD later released which was essentially the unrated version but with some additional scenes and extended dialogue.

Cast & Crew.

Theatrical trailer (834KB).

Buy the UK DVD

Buy the UK DVD box-set (1-4).

Buy the US DVD.

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