With Jigsaw now out in theaters, we revisit the franchise’s high point.

It could hardly be considered an exact science, but a case could be made that it’s in the third installment that a franchise is often perfected. A Nightmare on Elm Street, Paranormal Activity and Friday the 13th are all home to second sequels that are standout fan favorites, and Saw is certainly no exception to that particular theory.

Because with Saw III, the franchise was most definitely perfected.

Franchise co-creator Leigh Whannell returned to write Saw III, released in 2006 and directed by Saw II‘s Darren Lynn Bousman. It’s important to note Whannell’s involvement, because Saw III was the third and final time he was directly involved in the series’ storytelling. And it shows, as Saw III works overtime to provide franchise closure.

There are two main storylines that inevitably collide in Saw III, both of them compelling enough to elevate what many have written off as “torture porn” over the years into nothing short of a damn fine horror film that nails all the key themes and ideas that made the franchise so much more than that. In the first story, grieving father Jeff is kidnapped by Jigsaw and placed into a game where he’s forced to confront everyone who played a role in the death of his young son. They’ve all been strung up in nasty traps, and Jeff gets to decide who lives and who dies.

Elsewhere, we catch up with Lynn Denlon, a surgeon who is also kidnapped and placed into her own game. In Lynn’s game, a dying Jigsaw is confined to a bed in a makeshift, far-from-sterile hospital environment, where “student” Amanda Young is watching over him. Lynn’s task? Keep Jigsaw alive. If he dies, a collar around her neck will explode.

It’s the second story that is unquestionably the most important in Saw III. As we find out at the very end of the film (spoiler alert!), Lynn’s game was actually Amanda’s game, which is a surprise twist even to Amanda. It was Amanda who had to keep Lynn alive, and Jigsaw intentionally kept from her the important little tidbit that Jeff and Lynn are husband and wife.

Why would Jigsaw be testing Amanda *again*, after she already survived the “reverse bear trap” in the first film? Well, that’s where Saw III gets really interesting. Jigsaw *wants* Amanda to take over his work after he dies, but he’s not convinced that she’s actually capable of carrying on his cause. Amanda’s traps are designed to kill rather than teach lessons, and Jigsaw’s final test for her, before he dies, is to see if she has the will to keep a “subject” alive. As for Amanda, well, she’s got some serious demons battling inside her head.

Amanda Young, unquestionably the most interesting character in the franchise, was seemingly destined to become just that in the first Saw. Though she only makes a minor appearance in that film, it’s something she says to the police after surviving her trap that hits to the heart of everything the franchise is about.

“He helped me,” she tells them, referring to Jigsaw.

Amanda is the only victim of Jigsaw’s games who has actually learned the lesson he spent the final years of his life trying to impart, finding through her near-death experience a purpose in her life for the very first time. She is incredibly important to Jigsaw, and naturally, he’s the most important person in her life. It’s this connection between the two characters that makes Saw III something of a twisted love story, as Amanda vies for Jigsaw’s attention in the presence of another woman (Lynn) who seems to be the new apple of her teacher’s eye.

This sends Amanda into a tailspin, and it becomes clear that she has a goal that’s very different from Jigsaw’s: while Jigsaw genuinely wants his subjects to survive, Amanda simply cannot deal with the idea of anyone else in the world possessing the unique gift that Jigsaw has provided her with. It’s this dynamic between the two villains that makes Saw III the most interesting film in the franchise from a storytelling standpoint, and the performances of a calm Tobin Bell and a distraught Shawnee Smith sell that dynamic beautifully.

Revisiting Saw III this week, it became clear to me that Leigh Whannell intended to use the film, again his final one in the series, to wrap up loose ends and bring all the storylines from the previous two films to a satisfying conclusion. And he does just that with his script, using Saw III to cap off what is great standalone trilogy within the franchise. In particular, Saw III deepens the character of Amanda before killing her off, returning to the events of the very first Saw movie and showing us something new: Amanda was helping Jigsaw all along.

It was Amanda, wearing that iconic pig mask, who kidnapped Dr. Gordon and Adam, and as we learned in Saw II, it was Amanda who was running that particular show with a front row seat. The first three films wonderfully build upon that story of Jigsaw and Amanda, and Saw III is the perfect conclusion to their saga together. With massive wounds to the neck, one by gunshot and one by circular saw, Jigsaw and Amanda bleed out together. It’s a tale somewhat akin to Romeo and Juliet, only 1000x more twisted, and there’s something beautiful about it all.

While all this is going on, Saw III also serves up some of the franchise’s most gruesome traps, both through flashbacks to some of Amanda’s subjects and also to Jigsaw’s final game, the latter involving Lynn’s husband, Jeff. The traps in Saw III are aggressive and hard to watch, with “The Rack” and “Pig Vat” being two particular standouts on that front.

Bottom line being, Saw III delivers on everything that made the Saw films so damn good in the franchise’s early days, telling a compelling story, nauseating us with creatively nasty traps, and hitting us with a final act twist that we genuinely didn’t see coming. In many ways, it’s the perfect Saw film, and it’s also one of the best franchise sequels of them all.

Unfortunately, there’s a downside to Saw III. After it killed off everything interesting about the story, the franchise quickly went downhill and never managed to recover.

But that original trilogy remains an incredible 3-part story of two characters: one who is searching for her own purpose, and another who is trying to give one to others.