If anything these movies are a treatise on American desire for violence, as they willfully destroy the plot on purpose in each movie, so the only reason anybody watches it is to see grue. It's actually somewhat disturbing.
Can't really argue that. Personally, I find the mystery more intriguing than the traps, which have become nothing more than a pissing contest over who can think up a more wildly unbelievable killing mechanism with each new installment. The best part of V was Strahm's detective work, even though the audience knows who he's looking for.
The main problems with V (God, where to begin?): *SPOILER ALERT* (though I'm assuming by clicking this topic you've either seen the movie or don't care...
- Exactly how the hell did Hoffman build such an elaborate first trap... especially when Jigsaw's own first trap was a chair with razor blades?
- The line: "I am an investigative journalist for *point to Holy Jesus* 'The Herald.'"
- The line: "Survival of the fittest, MY ASS!"
- The half-assed explanation as to how Jigsaw can predict what people are going to do and how he has a tape prepared specifically for that person.
- Hoffman framing Strahm in perhaps the dumbest way imaginable and everyone falls for it despite how desperately flawed and non-sensical it is: Hoffman steals Strahm's confiscated cell phone from the evidence room, calls Strahm's boss then hangs up right away, turns off the phone, then turns it back on once he gets to his evil lair so the FBI can track it. So they mean to tell me that Strahm, who had evaded both the police and the FBI for months, steals his crime scene evidence cell phone and makes a dumbsh*t mistake like turning it on in his evil lair filled with top secret files and after absolutely no investigation whatsoever, everyone now collectively and unquestionably believes that Strahm is Jigsaw's apprentice. What the crap?
- The subplot with the 5 people in the room had to nothing to do with the main plot. They never came together in any meaningful way.
- That stupid last room with the moving walls which killed Strahm thus leaving no "good guys" for the sequel except Erickson who isn't interesting at all.
The main problem is that there are no surprises because the Saw films are so formulaic now. Saw 1 had a surprising if slightly implausible ending regardless of how hard the writers tried to justify it in Saw 3. Saw 2 was blissfully ironic, but by Saw 3 it became increasing obvious that the writers were just force feeding the non-traditional "bad guys win" ending which, ironically, has become cliche in the series because they did it too many times. The writers are so accustomed to implementing the twist ending that they forgot that a twist ending needs to be believable, not to mention surprising, for it to work.