Apparently there's going to be a "Saw 6".

There can't possibly be a Saw 6, can there? Is there anyone left who hasn't had everything already chopped off?

One or two of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" sequels were, actually, watchable.

But this franchise? The very first film was a load of gut-wrenching crap, let's face it. It's been reprised FIVE TIMES?

Isn't the plan to make 10 in all?

Get with the times, man: Saw 6 came out last year (here in the US, at least). Saw 7 is due this year--and IN 3-D!!!.

It seems that as long as it still makes financial sense, these will keep on being made. Saw 6 cost $11m to make, and earned $24m at the box office in the US.

At least Saw 6's poster wasn't as creepy as Saw 5's poster was. That freaked me out.

I didn't think the first one was all that bad, actually. I bought, on Halloween 2005 and in the mood for horror films, both Saw and the London Underground based Creep. The latter was dreadful in comparison to the former.

But yes, there has been a rapid descent into really poor later instalments. I gave up after the fifth (the third and fourth are set in a parallel timeline) which, lacking the Jigsaw guy in a leading/living role, was just awful.

imdb.com is of the opinion that the seventh episode is to be the last.

The 2nd was better than the first, for me. The 3rd was OK, but I didnt get into the 4th one, and havent yet seen, or am likely to see the others. Thought the first 2 were brilliant for the genre.

At least Saw 6's poster wasn't as creepy as Saw 5's poster was. That freaked me out.

I think they'd be better off creating those ad poster campaigns than releasing another Saw movie - they're far more imaginative and creepy than the tiresome crap that seems to make itself felt with every episode. I could never grab the contrived, clunky psychology behind the Jigsaw character. I've just had a car crash after being told I'll die of cancer - I know, I'll entrap people and torture them in a variety of ways so as to force them to embrace the beauty of life and not take it for granted.

Well, that's that then. If my doctor tells me I've got months to live, I'm going Heath Robinson on people's arses and strapping up some plank to a machine that works like Satan's combine harvester.

Saw just gets more annoying the longer they string it out to another credibility-crushing sequel, where characters are either death fodder, or 2-D cyphers who undergo farcical psychological changes to prolong the whole carnival of human splat. 47th Element is right about the first film, though. Bloody it may be, but it was also tightly constructed and had more to do about people's psychology under horrific pressures then just pandering to the adolescent horror crowd.

Than it became just tortuous rubbish (in many senses). Strange world this. Terry Gilliam has to fuck about forever to find funding for his films, but someone will easily shovel cash into developing a franchise that should've stopped after the first film.

I read somewhere that the same production team are going to embark on a new multi-film franchise called Sore, where a crazed egomaniac constructs fiendish contraptions that give the protagonists a variety of irritating skin complaints.

Or "Snore", in which all concerned are bored to sleep after the first film.

Oh.

I actually really quite like the way the Saw films just go over and over and over the same events, obsessively and in minute detail, from slightly different points of view. Like a spring winding and winding. It's interesting.

That's the trouble. If it was handled in something other than a bludgeoning, subtle-as-vomit way (and I know it's the horror genre), then I think it really could've been something compelling, but it's all done in such a cloddish, childish way that its repetitive, dumb trickery elicits less a stunned and fascinated reaction than 'oh, fuck off!'