Say what you will about the Saw films, but they do well for Lionsgate and have definitely found an appreciative audience. The fact that they're catching up to older franchises like Halloween, A Nightmare On Elm Street, Friday The 13th and Hellraiser (the later having lost its theatrical run privileges some time ago) seemingly has little to do with the series' box office success and if they're not raking in as much as the earlier entries did, they're still turning a tidy profit ensuring more sequels to come. In fact, the director of this entry has already been tagged to direct Saw VII in 3-D working once again from a script by Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, with Tobin Bell once again reprising his role as Jigsaw.

When the movie begins, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) has recently died but a police officer named Lieutenant Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) still intends to carry out his strange work by finding, entrapping and punishing those who he deems to be guilty. Of course, this will entail setting up those various traps and all that drama that is sure to ensue when they're given the choice to live or die while thinking back on what they may have done to deserve a spot in this most unholy of courtrooms. To help him with all of this, Hoffman's got one major quirk working in his favor - the cops think that the late Special Agent Peter Strahm was Jigsaw's apprentice, and so he's more or less operating off of their radar entirely.

Regardless, when Hoffman feels that the forensics team and investigators working on solving the rash of Jigsaw-esque murders, he figures his work may be in danger and so he decides to work a little more quietly, particularly when someone from his past, who he thought to be dead, turns out to be alive and well. Hoffman decides it's time to begin an all new game, by snagging a high ranking insurance company executive, William Easton (Peter Outerbridge), who he knows is guilty of denying coverage to people who his calculations dictate will not turn a nice profit for his company. Hoffman puts Easton in the unenviable position of having to deal with people from his rather checkered past as the plan that is put into motion forces him to face up to what he's done and who he's done it to.

You've got to appreciate the fact that the writers of this sixth entry in the series are so keen to flip their middle fingers to the insurance industry in such an unsubtle way as they do here. This makes for a fairly topical film (at least when it hit theaters late last year around Halloween while the health care debates raged across the country), by the standards of the series, but also opens up some new and interesting possibilities within Jigsaw's original ideas which play out quite well here. This entry doesn't really break much new ground in terms of where the film goes or how it gets there but despite the fact that it's more or less a self contained story, it does do good things with some of the continuity's loose ends and wraps up a few ideas, themes and minor plot points that needed it while still leaving enough open for the pending sequel - just as a good franchise movie should.

As far as the series' famous 'traps' scenes go, there are some good ones here. Plenty of blood, guts, and broken bones will litter the playing field when it's all said and done and the creativity that the series has consistently shown in terms of coming up with more and more bizarre ways to off people is still the highpoint. Here we see Hoffman's machines, made in the style of his mentor's, do just as much damage as those that came before and the tension that builds between the beginning and the end of each game is still enjoyable in its own twisted way. The production values and attention to detail afforded the traps, sets and grim locations is still fairly impressive, though as always some ideas are just a bit too far removed (really, a killer carousel?).

Ultimately a step up from the last few entries, Saw VI won't change your mind on the series if you've already made it up, but if you find yourself teetering, give it a shot. It's the best entry out of the last few and if nothing else, it's entertaining enough.

Video:

Saw VI arrives on Blu-ray in a 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen 1080p AVC encoded transfer on this Blu-ray disc that looks about as good you'd expect given the film's recent vintage and taking into account its grimy, bleak color scheme. Like the other entries in the series, the film makes use of a very dark color scheme, lots of moldy looking green hues are used, with tints of rust colors, browns, and pale whites. The film is very cold looking, appropriately so, and the transfer does a good job of replicating this. Detail is fairly strong, black levels as well, and while there's a bit of grain here and there you won't likely notice any actual print damage. Flesh tones look decent, and despite some banding, some erratic black tonal shifts, and some darker spots that break up a little bit, there's little to complain about here. It's not a perfect looking picture, but it suits the tone of the movie well.