There's little point in summarizing Saw III, the latest film serving up mindless violence and carnage for audiences with an appetite for bloodletting—an appetite that, unfortunately, drove it to No. 1 at the box office last week, thus guaranteeing that Hollywood will continue to, ahem, churn out these gore-fests.
David DiCerto (Catholic News Service) says, "The third time is definitely not the charm with Saw III. … The film has new players, but the same gory excess, as director Darren Lynn Bousman invents more grisly ways to shock audiences increasingly desensitized to brutality."
Steven Isaac (Plugged In) writes, "Commingling the message of forgiveness with endless scenes of torture and death—in the way all of the Saw movies do—is at best schizophrenic, and at worst diabolical."
Mainstream critics are more creative in condemning this third round of carnage than the filmmakers were in making the movie.