After sticking it to corrupt property developers in Saw V, John Kramer AKA Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) sets his sights on callous health insurance executives in Saw VI, before hopefully moving on to greedy movie moguls in Saw VII.

This 2009 sequel opens with a sick joke, when two victims (Marty Moreau and Tanedra Howard) have to deposit their own flesh in order to escape Jigsaw’s trap. As the big guy starts hacking off his stomach fat, the thin woman grasps briefly at her own stomach before deciding to cut off her arm instead. After this single gag the only people laughing are the Lionsgate execs counting your money.

Just as Star Wars fans went into The Phantom Menace expecting space soap opera and were served economic torture about trade blockades, gorehounds went to Saw VI looking for torture and were given a medical soap opera about health insurance. The test subject this time around is the insurance boss (Peter Outerbridge) who once denied Kramer coverage for cancer treatment, using the company’s policy calculation formula to systematically exploit the sick and dying.

This does give the film a satirical angle of sorts, but any political commentary is undermined by Jigsaw’s ridiculous methods (how does torturing one insurance man help fix the American healthcare system?) and continuously lowering bar for someone worthy of torture, including a janitor who smokes too much (Gerry Mendicino). And if anyone is guilty of boiling human life down to a formula then it’s John Kramer. He even has the audacity to accuse a journalist (Samantha Lemole) of sensationalising his crimes, which happen to include locking her brother in a deadly maze in an abandoned zoo while also being dead the whole time.

Jigsaw’s hypocrisies aside, Saw VI falls into the same over-engineered traps that made the last few entries so dull and confusing. The fact the series’ editor (Kevin Greutert) is now its director tells you all you need to know about how these films are made. In some ways the producers have learnt from the mistakes of the previous impenetrable instalments, by refocusing on the more accessible torture-maze side of the story, but the franchise has become so convoluted that even going back to basics requires a PhD in Saw lore.

Saw VI is an improvement on its most circuitous predecessors, with twists that advance the plot more than the previous two movies combined. But it remains trapped in a narrative cul-de-sac of its own making, practically begging to be put out of its (and our) misery by the Lionsgate bosses still bleeding it dry.