Okay, so up until recently, I hadn't seen any of the Saw films. The first one I saw about a week ago was Saw II, and I thought it was pretty good. Borrowed a copy of Saw from a friend of mine, thought that it was brilliant. Went back and watched Saw II and realized that there are actually quite a few flaws in it and it wasn't nearly as good now that I had seen the first film. Though it was still okay. I'm going to see Saw III as soon as I can, and I expect that it will be even more of a decline, though some people I have talked to think that it's a pretty good ending to the whole series.
Of course, with all the trilogies going around now-a-days, you'd expect them to stop there. But no. Apparently a fourth Saw film is going to be made soon. The date that is supposed to be released is October 26, this year. Just how in the hell do they plan to continue the story other than having Jeff going to save his daughter (even though I haven't seen the third film, I know what happens for the most part). Unless of course they go the prequel route, and that tends to not work out (Psycho IV comes to mind). And apparently the actor who plays Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) has publicly announced that he's already signed on for the fourth and fifth films of the installment! WTF? How far are they going to take this? I mean, there's only so many ways that you can gruesomely kill people.
So, are we just supposed to expect to see a Saw film every Halloween for the rest of our lives? From what I can gather, between the three current films and the comic book Saw: Rebirth, we know exactly why Jigsaw is doing what he does. We know how he finds his victims, and we know what it is that he wants out of the short amount of life he has left. There's nothing more that can possibly be added to the story. At this point it's just finding horrific ways to torture and kill people. That's not why the Saw franchise was created. Sure, it never spared us the gory details, but it also had the intelligence behind it. Something that I fear is going to soon be lost. The brilliance of Saw was already disappearing by the second film, and I'd imagine the third film loses even more of it, but now fourth and fifth films? What happened to the psychological thriller I fell in love with?