Picking up shortly after "Saw 2", and the Jigsaw killer (Tobin Bell) is playing another one of his games.
But dying from the ravages of cancer he is forced to enlist the help of a nurse named Lynn (Bahar Soomekh) to help keep him alive for the duration.
The nurse then finds herself part of Jigsaw's game plan as an explosive collar, which is wired to his heart rate monitor, is placed around her neck and told if he doesn't survive to see the end of the game, neither will she.
The latest "test" in question revolves around a stricken parent named Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) who is forced to confront all the people he feels responsible for the death of his young son and decide whether to free them from the sickening torture devices they're strapped to, or just let them perish.
With Lynn, and one of Jigsaw's previous survivors Amanda (Shawnee Smith), battling to keep him alive, we are treated to graphic scenes of DIY open skull surgery whilst Jeff wanders round the nearby building, deciding whether or not to rescue people knee dip in pig guts, strapped up in freezers or being stretched to death on racks. But could this rather simple test be part of a much larger game plan?
Definitely the goriest entry in the series so far, this one caused a bit of uproar in the UK press upon its release in 2006, when people were reportedly fainting in the cinemas due to its excessively graphic content (that's what happens when ordinary folk go to see horror films). There's a lot of nice gory scenes, plus there are some further neat twists in the tale. It was also good to see them maintaining continuity by re-introducing some characters from the previous films.
Fans of the series and general horror movie fans will definitely love it, though it's a world away from the psychological horror film that was the original.
