...William Easton.

I know Saw VI hasn't been getting the greatest reviews.  Rotten Tomatoes has it at 43% as I write this, and on Metacritic it's sitting at a sad little 34%.  Critics tend to be harder on horror movies than necessary, I think.  A lot of them don't understand where horror fans are coming from.  When we go to see a Friday the 13th movie, we aren't expecting it to have an ultra-compelling story.  We aren't expecting Jason to have some kind of tender moment as he's killing the last victim.  We go to a slasher movie to see murders, we go to a monster movie to see monsters, and we go to a torture-porn movie to see people put in situations that cause them pain or death, and slowly.  Blood and gore are usually an important part of this, although some things (ie ghost movies) can be very effective without them.  If the gory murders/monsters/torture are good enough, the story can make less sense and we won't mind that much.

So, was the torture:story ratio good enough in Saw VI?  I think so.  William Easton is a high-ranking executive at a health insurance company.  It seems that he's actually responsible for creating an algorithm that looks at a potential customer's health history and determines the likelihood of their dying from something under coverage.  If the probability is low enough, coverage is considered.  Maybe he should have paid more attention to whose coverage he was denying.  I'll give you a clue: it's Jigsaw.




Peter Outerbridge does a better job as Mr. Easton than some other people do in their roles.  Outerbridge feels like he's really in this situation.  I believed him.  Especially considering that his tests mostly come down to deciding who will live and who will die.  It was a good change on the part of the writers to change the game this way.  Aside from the first test, Easton was never in any real danger during his tests.  Sure there might be pain, but his life was not on the line.  It was the lives of people he knew that he was playing with.  This made the game more psychological, where in the past they've really come down to survival (I, II, V) or emotion (III, IV).


Costas Mandylor never felt right to me as Hoffman.  He's too burly.  He doesn't seem to do "calculating" very well.  I haven't seen him in anything else, so I can't say if the writing is partially to blame, but I know Costas is at least part of the problem.  There is one scene where I like Hoffman, and that's because it requires him to move quick and act without thinking.  Then he goes back to thinking immediately afterward, and it's right back to meh for me.

Tobin Bell is, as always, spectacular.  He makes the whole film work.  From the very beginning, Bell has taken the character of John Kramer/Jigsaw and made it his own.  He is Jigsaw.  As always, he plays the role with a certain sense of world-weariness, as if John just can't bring himself to really, truly care anymore, but wants to do what he can to make the world a better place.  Because that's what he's doing, after all, isn't it?  Making people appreciate their lives?  That's how he feels about it, at least.  It was interesting to see his face on the pre-trap videos instead of Billy the Puppet.  Makes sense, though, as he knew this test would only happen after his death.  It made the video feel more personal to the victim.

Shawnee Smith, I love you.  Amanda is my favorite character in the series, and I seriously doubt the writing ability of those that decided to kill her off.  Granted we still get to see her in the films, but I can't help but wish that her and Hoffman's places were reversed.  I loved the direction Amanda's character took in VI.  Let's just say she played a bigger role in John Kramer's life than any of us realized.

Aside from the main characters (good or bad), it was pretty standard horror acting all around.  It was nice to see Eddie Winslow from Family Matters show up. :P  The traps were interesting and bloody, particularly the first and last.  And I liked the competition aspect of the first trap.  Since it was obviously Hoffman's work, I'm thinking competition-based traps might be his calling card, so to say, since he obviously had a hand in setting up the traps for the main story.

Is Saw VI gonna make anybody a Saw fan?  Probably not.  Is it better than IV and V?  Yes, definitely.  Probably better than III as well, at least objectively (III is my personal favorite, and it's entirely for story reasons).  If you're a Saw fan, you've already seen it.  If you aren't, you probably won't.  Might I suggest, however, that if you are not, and you haven't seen any of them, to start at the first.  It's the best one, the least gory, and the easiest to follow.  It made me a fan, and maybe it will do it for you.