Saw III

This review of Saw III in The Independent made me laugh out loud. Follow this link to see the other reviews of the same film!

Go and see a film where people have to saw off their own feet, watch as their rib-cages are ripped from their bodies, and be drowned in a vat of liquefied pig guts, the editor said. See if you can endure it without puking or fainting. So, naturally, I fetched my 86-year-old granny and wheeled her to the nearest cinema.

My nan is the sweetest, gentlest old woman in the world, but for some reason she's always had an appetite for psychotically sadistic horror films. Some of my fondest memories from childhood are sitting up late at night with her, watching I Spit on Your Grave, Nightmares in a Damaged Brain and a hundred other video nasties.

We were already aficionados of the Saw films. For those of you who haven't seen them (where have you been?) they feature a serial murderer called Jigsaw placing an innocent civilian in a dilemma. You wake up wired to a hideous machine - its exact nature varies - and a white-faced puppet mask, which looks uncannily like the Tory MP John Redwood, appears before you to explain you can either elaborately mutilate your body to get away, or stay and die in agony. Imagine an edition of the Krypton Factor presented by Fred West, and you've got the idea.

From the first mutilation in Saw III, my nan was clapping her hands in glee. "Look, son - he's got to burn his face off on the pipe to get the key!" she exclaimed as I was gagging and retching into my popcorn. The camera never averts its gaze: you see every smashed bone and maggoty wound. "Whoever directed this should be sectioned," I groaned as yet another actor was turned into an interchangeable pile of body parts. "And given an Oscar!" she cried.

As a victim was having his arms and legs twisted from his body, I asked Nan how she could stand it. "Oh, once you've lost control of your bowels, nothing looks very gross any more, darlin'," she said. "Now shut up, look - his leg's come right off!" The only way to survive Saw III is with your nan there to hold your hand. Just make sure she doesn't saw it off when you're not looking.