Saw VI
Kevin Greutert, 2009,
Halfway through this interminable series, I assumed its best days (which were not great!) were behind it, so imagine my surprise that Saw VI may actually be the high water mark! After editing all the previous installments, Kevin Greutert moved to the director’s chair for this one, and he appears not to have micromanaged the new editor (Andrew Coutts), because the obnoxious, spastic editing style of old has been dramatically toned down, as has the jaundiced color palette. Pound for pound, this is arguably the best-made Saw movie so far: its knotty daytime TV plotting and dizzying array of flashbacks is by now more amusing than annoying, and Jigsaw’s traps and their staging are more considered, all constructed around a unifying statement: fuck the US health insurance industry. Back in 2009, I watched Saw VI on a lark without having seen any of the other films, and I incorrectly assumed they were all similarly heavy-handed polemics. Maybe it would have done them some good? Anyway, I seem to be more entertained by this film now than I was then, which makes me wonder if this week’s steady diet of Saw double features has given me a bit of Stockholm syndrome.