Review #378: Saw VI (2009)

October 2026 Horror Reviews #6 - Saw VI (2009)

We're back with another entry in the increasingly-serialized horror franchise, Saw! In this entry, we pick up right where the last one ended off with Detective Hoffman having emerged victorious, and he spends the rest of the movie trying to cast suspicion on the missing Agent Strahm. Meanwhile, the insurance adjuster who denied John Kramer coverage has been thrown into a Saw Deathtrap where he has to experience the pain and suffering he's inflicted on other people. Will he have a change of heart by the end? If so, will it save him?

I complained last time that I don't like how these movies have become so serialized, and this one falls under that as well. (I honestly don't know how or why someone who has never seen a Saw movie would have ANY clue what was going on in this movie. I know that the typical moviegoer has probably seen at least one other entry in a series before buying a ticket to #6, but still, movies that release once a year just aren't a good medium for stories that practically start and end mid-scene.) In this entry it's especially strange, though, because it kind of feels like two different movies- the story of the insurance guy who has to go through a Saw dungeon feels like it could have been its own Saw movie, but since it was only 30 minutes long they wrapped it up in some patter about Hoffman trying to make it seem like Strahm is out there taking after Jigsaw. Neither side of the film intersects with the other in any real way, I don't even understand how or when (or why) Hoffman would have set up this deathtrap, but the filmmakers seem to have decided that the audience is here for two things: a deathtrap dungeon, and a plot about Hoffman being Jigsaw.

Notice I didn't say that the audience is here for twists: normally I would have insisted that was the third pillar of this series, but honestly? This movie doesn't have one. The biggest thing resembling a twist we get in here is the part where you think the mother and son in the deathtrap dungeon are the insurance guy's wife and son, and then at the end it turns out they aren't. But that distinction didn't actually change anything (it was literally just a bait-and-switch for the audience) so it feels dishonest to even call it a twist. Other than that, the plot is incredibly straightforward- Hoffman acts like Strahm is Jigsaw, the FBI keeps on investigating, eventually it comes to a head and the truth gets revealed and some people die. There were quite possibly the lowest stakes of the series so far, and I'm kind of baffled that someone thought they could wring a whole movie out of this.

While I'm complaining, can I just say one more negative thing? Somehow this city has enough abandoned factories and bunkers and schools and even AN ABANDONED ZOO that John Kramer was able to buy up or otherwise secure to have at his disposal. (Apparently not that secure though, as there's a flashback where he and Hoffman are setting up the traps for Saw III, complete with an unconscious victim in tow, and Jill just shows up unannounced. So apparently the doors weren't even locked, and someone could have walked in off the street at any time.) It makes no sense for every single movie to have an entire new murder complex, complete with a dozen huge precision deathtraps all with moving parts and complex processes that all need to be completely autonomous since Hoffman has an actual dayjob he needs to do while also framing Strahm. I know the series will (spoilers) reveal that there's one or two other people working for Jigsaw, but even if there were twenty more people working for Jigsaw the workload for all of these deathtrap dungeons is absurd (and that's not even getting into the fact that John planned and recorded videos and tapes for all of these before he died, weeks in advance at least). The filmmakers keep making every deathtrap dungeon bigger and more complex than the one before it, which is the wrong direction to go when narratively, John's workforce keeps getting smaller and less unified!

I think this might be the worst Saw movie so far (except for 3, as that one had nothing going for it in my opinion). The deathtrap dungeon story was pretty good, I guess, and the moment at the end with the reverse bear trap is genuinely fantastic. (I said yesterday that the part where Strahm gets his head put in a water-filled tank is my favorite moment in the series, and this one is right up there, for mostly the same reasons. I don't care for Hoffman as a villain or even as a character but when the movie shows him do something legitimately impressive, I gotta call it out.) I don't have many memories of the next chapter but at least I can rest assured that it'll be the end of this run of serialized entries, for better and for worse.

Overall Rating: 4/10 Merry-Go-Rounds of Death

Mama Mia: Apparently, in an early version of the script, the plot was going to revolve around Detective Hoffman taking on the Mafia. We can only imagine how that would have gone!

Next Up: Saw 3D (2010)!