Saw III
Interview: Bousman and Whannell on Saw III Twists
“We didn’t even think of a twist ending to this,” said director Darren Lynn Bousman. “I think most people will figure it out in the first 15 minutes of the film. That’s really not a twist to me. From dialogue one of the movie, it gives it away. It tells you what it’s about. I think we hopefully surpassed just the gimmicks of Saw.”
Writer Leigh Whannell, who co-created the Saw films, might be a little bit tired of coming up with twists. “In some ways, it’s easy to do a rug pull twist where you just at the last second pull the rug out from under the audience’s feet and say, ‘Ta da!’ the Scooby-Doo ending,” said Whannell. “Someone pulls off a mask and it’s like, ‘It turns out I’m your mother.’ What Darren and I struck for Saw III was to have an emotionally impactful ending. We wanted something that would almost make someone who was really invested in the story cry. We have Jigsaw, this character who’s been so cold and clinical, he’s been presented throughout the previous two films as someone who’s very much in control. He’s more like a reptile than a human being. In Saw III he becomes a human being. You see him crack. His veneer cracks and that was what was most important to us far and above any sort of gimmick or twist.”
With Saw films going into production once a year, it was vital to keep changing things up. If the first two were about twists, even the best surprise would eventually become a cliché. “It was crucial to us that we don’t want to become a parody of ourselves,” said Bousman. “We don’t want to become a happy meal of horror films. I saw that now and there’s a little Jigsaw toy coming out. We took some major risks in Saw III that I think we could have gone a much safer route. We could have gotten more violent, we could have made it just more about the traps, we could have come up with a much bigger twist I’m sure. But it wasn’t about that this time around. I think for Saw to stay fresh, it has to evolve. I think going into Saw III, that’s what we all decided is like God, please don’t let this become like another one of these horrifically bad sequels that start dropping people off. So Leigh took a lot and I think the whole crew did, a lot of risks in some of the choices that we made.”
The regular actors, who are far more intimate with the characters of Jigsaw and Amanda than even us, say they were still caught off guard, even though they understood. “The fact that the game was about [spoiler omitted] was surprising to me,” said Tobin Bell. “It made perfect sense to me given who he is, so I was surprised by that. It’s logical. It was logical to me and I was surprised.”
Shawnee Smith had the sort of emotional response that the filmmakers wanted. “It devastated me,” she said. “I don't know how surprised I was, but I was devastated.”
The newer actors, Angus Macfadyen and Bahar Soomekh, just got sucked into Jigsaw’s tricks. “I think I was surprised,” said Macfadyen. “I certainly didn’t realize what the twist was.”
Soomekh, who never watches horror films and only caught up on the Saw films when she got the role, was the most astonished. “So this is what Darren did. I got the script and was up until two in the morning reading it, and he left the last 10 pages out. So I had to meet him. So we go to lunch, we’re at lunch and I’m meeting him for the first time, we’re talking and then I ask, ‘So what happens? Tell me the end.’ And he tells me the end, I got up from the table, I took my napkin, I went up to him and I whacked him. ‘How the f*ck can you do that!’ I was so angry at him. And that’s the reaction you want, like ‘How in the hell did you go there? Why? WHY?’ So yes, I was very surprised what he did.”
Saw III opens to theatres on October 27th.
For the posters, trailers, more interviews, synopsis and more movie info, go to the Saw
III Movie Page.
Stay tuned for updates.
|
Add to Heffee!
