Taglines: 6 Chances, 6 Lessons. 6 Choices.
The body of Agent Strahm is completely smashed and destroyed and Detective Mark Hoffman frames him. Strahm is accused of being Jigsaw’s apprentice and the FBI chases him. Dan Erickson calls Hoffman and he learns that Agent Lindsey Perez has not died. When Dan finds a tape with the voice of the killer, he invites Hoffman and Perez to go with him to the laboratory to see the progress with the identification of the real voice. John’s widow Jill Tuck receives a box from his lawyer with six envelops with instructions and she gives the first five to Hoffman. The unethical CEO of the Umbrella Health, William Easton, and his team are abducted and William is forced to play a game and choose who will live or die to save his family and him.
Saw VI is a 2009 American horror film directed by Kevin Greutert from a screenplay written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan. It is the sixth installment in the Saw franchise and stars Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Mark Rolston, Peter Outerbridge, and Shawnee Smith. It was produced by Mark Burg and Oren Koules of Twisted Pictures and distributed by Lionsgate.
Saw VI continues the franchise’s focus on the posthumous effects of the Jigsaw Killer and the progression of his successor, Mark Hoffman. In this film, Hoffman sets a series of traps for an insurance executive, William Easton, and his employees. Meanwhile, the FBI trails Peter Strahm, now suspected of being Jigsaw’s last accomplice, and Hoffman is drawn into motion to protect his secret identity.
Saw VI opened in 3,036 theaters on 4,000 screens[38] and earned $6.9 million on its opening day, in second place behind Paranormal Activity which grossed $7.5 million that day during its second weekend of wide release.[39] It grossed $14.1 million its opening weekend, which is the lowest of all the Saw films. It remained at number two behind Paranormal Activity which was playing on only 64% as many screens as Saw VI, but made 67% more money.
On Halloween weekend, it moved down to number six and made $5.2 million, a 63% decrease in ticket sales from the previous weekend. By its third weekend it declined in sales by 61% and was removed from 945 theaters. It fell into 11th place with $2 million. By its fourth weekend, ticket sales declined by 78% and the film was pulled from 1,314 theaters; it made $449,512. On its fifth and final weekend it made $91,875, an 80% decrease, and it was pulled from an additional 599 theaters. It was being shown in 178 theaters by the end of its run. The film closed out of theaters on November 24, 2009, after only 35 days.
Saw VI began its international run in tenth place with $4.7 million on 946 screens in 11 markets. It opened in the United Kingdom in second place behind Up, grossing $2.6 million on 375 screens. In Australia, it opened at fourth place with earnings of $846,000 on 164 screens. In its second week it came in eighth place with $4.4 million on 1,229 screens in 20 markets for a total of $11.8 million.
The film opened in third place in Russia with $1.1 million on 273 screens while it fell to fourth place in the United Kingdom with $1.5 million on 381 screens over the weekend for a total of $6.1 million. Saw VI was released in Spain on October 8, 2010 and grossed $1.2 million on its opening weekend in 211 theaters. The film has come to gross $27.6 million in the United States and Canada, and $40.5 million in other markets, for a worldwide total of $68.2 million; making it the lowest-grossing film of the series.
About the Story
The movie opens in a similar fashion to the earlier films – a woman (played by Tanedra Howard, winner of the ‘Scream Queens’ reality show) awakens in a dark room with a trap on her head. The trap consists of a headset with two bolts placed at her temples in such a position that they will drill into her brain if activated. Across the room, separated from the girl’s location by an impassable fence, an overweight man awakens with the same device on his head. Despite the girl’s efforts to control the situation, the man panics, and accidentally activates the signature television message from Jigsaw. Jigsaw blames the two individuals for their roles in medical insurance ‘crimes’ (denying policies and claims for profit) and directs their attention to a scale mounted between the fences.
One of the two will most certainly die, according to Jigsaw, and the survivor will be the one who cuts off the most flesh from their own bodies and places it on the scale in a 60 second time frame. To demonstrate what will happen if they are unsuccessful, Jigsaw gives a warning twist of the screw headsets, causing them minor injuries. When the tape stops, the man takes a knife from a table of tools left by Jigsaw and begins to cut away at his love handles for the scale.
The girl is physically fit and has no such option, and first attempts to cut her chains. However, the man has already cut away a portion of his flesh and dropped it into the scale, and has started on a second. The girl panics and ties surgical tubing around her upper arm to form a makeshift tourniquet, and starts to cut her arm off with the knife. By the time she has done this, however, the man has placed a second hunk of flesh on the scale. With seconds left to spare, the girl grabs a butcher knife and brutally hacks away at her entire arm, severs it, and drops it into the scale. This swings the weight on her favor and the man dies as the headset drills into his brain. The girl survives, ending the opening scene.
The main protagonist is a man named William (Peter Outerbridge), a vice president of claims and investigations for a medical insurance company named “Umbrella Health”. He supervises a team of six individuals who use a morally gray formula devised by William to determine when it would be appropriate to deny claims. His team, and William, are continuously portrayed as extremely nit-picky individuals when it comes to their work, actively seeking minor errors and faults in applications in order to cut down on costs rather then focusing on the lives of their clients.
William himself is shown as being in council with the company’s beautiful legal advisor, sharing a drink with her in his office as he is having a phone conversation with what sounds like a loved one. He says he is stuck in a meeting with legal and will be unable to attend a birthday. The legal advisor is helping William prepare a deposition, as he is coming under legal fire by a previous client, who died after William denied his insurance claims. In a flashback, it is demonstrated that the deceased was suffering from a heart condition, and William’s team used an unrelated oral surgery from 30 years ago to justify their denials. William seems to see absolutely no problem with this, and commends his team as they continue to bring him similar issues.
Next, the successor to Jigsaw, Detective Hoffman, (Costas Mandylor), is shown in the glass box he had hidden away in at the end of Saw 5. The box transports him outside the ‘crushing wall’ trap area and into another room, where he simply exits the box and returns to double check the trap’s success. He opens the walls and the corpse of Agent Peter Strahm is revealed to be a mangled and torn mess, confirming his death.
Detective Hoffman is called to the scene of the opening scene’s trap some time in the future. Erickson, the FBI agent supervising Strahm from the previous movie, is already there with local authorities. They have discovered fingerprints at the scene of the crime, which is new to them. It turns out they belong to Agent Peter Strahm – Hoffman had retrieved Strahm’s hand from the wall trap and is using it to further implicate him in traps as a cover for his own work.
However, this is endangered when Erickson introduces their new partner in the investigation: Special Agent Lindsay Perez. She was Strahm’s partner in the earlier films, who was assumed dead. It is explained that her death was only implied, as they didn’t want to risk her life until they knew whom they could trust – as Strahm had been implicated as the Jigsaw Killer, and only Hoffman knew of his death, they decided it was safe to let Hoffman in on the secret. This alarms Hoffman a great deal, as she knew Strahm best, and is a threat to his cover.
Continue Reading and View the Theatrical Trailer
Saw VI (2009)
Directed by: Kevin Greutert
Starring: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Mark Rolston, Shawnee Smith, Athena Karkanis, Samantha Lemole, Peter Outerbridge, Caroline Cave, Tanedra Howard, George Newbern, Melanie Scrofano
Screenplay by: Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton
Production Design by: Anthony A. Ianni
Cinematography by: David A. Armstrong
Film Editing by: Andrew Coutts
Costume Design by: Alex Kavanagh
Art Direction by: Elis Lam
Music by: Charlie Clouser
MPAA Rating: R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, and language.
Distributed by: Lionsgate Films
Release Date: October 23, 2009
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