Saw VII renamed Saw 3-D: The Traps Come Alive, because honestly, it just doesn't matter anymore

By Sean O'Neal | July 9, 2010 | 5:11pm

Aux Features Film

With each successive sequel, the Saw franchise has been tasked with finding new, inventive ways to stretch increasingly paler imitations of its Mouse Trap morality play, and find passably fresh storytelling angles to get from one torture porn scenario to the next. But then 3-D was reinvented, and suddenly that kind of thing just didn’t matter anymore. In fact, they could probably go ahead and call it something pointedly dumb like Saw 3-D: The Traps Come Alive—as opposed to something with pretensions of mystery like Saw VII—and confess right there in the title that “plot” and “character” have officially been superseded by inanimate devices that tear people’s heads off. And you know what? With inflated 3-D ticket prices, they’ll still make enough to justify another one. Because they could call it Saw: Let’s Face It, It’s Both A 3-D Horror Film And The Seventh One Of These Fuckers In Six Years—Let’s Not Put On Any Airs Here and they’d still make a return on their investment.

Besides, has anyone considered the possibility that we’re prematurely misreading things? Perhaps this seemingly leaden subtitle is not just an awkward way of suggesting that the 3-D process makes things more “lifelike” from a desperate marketing division. In fact, maybe the latest Saw film is really a parable in which these innocent traps, for many years bound to the torturous whims of their unfeeling creators, are liberated by the sudden gift of thinking and feeling souls, and revolt against the tyranny of their design by refusing to engender any more suffering. And maybe if you all opened your heart a little bit, these traps—whom you’ve so thoughtlessly dismissed as “death devices” in the past—could teach you a thing or two what it really means to “come alive.” Maybe you're the one who's trapped, hmm?