The film stars Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Betsy Russell, Sean Patrick Flanery, and Cary Elwes.

Meanwhile, John Kramer's ex-wife Jill Tuck (Russell) informs internal affairs that rogue detective Mark Hoffman (Mandylor) is the man responsible for the recent Jigsaw games.

Dr. Lawrence Gordon is revealed to have survived the bathroom trap years earlier,[a] using a steam pipe to cauterize his ankle nub after escaping.

He also abducts Bobby Dagen, a self-help guru who achieved fame and fortune by fabricating a story of his own survival of a Jigsaw trap.

Gibson discovers the location of Bobby's game and sends a SWAT team, who are sealed in another room and killed by toxic gas.

After reaching Jill and executing her with the original reverse bear trap, Hoffman destroys his workshop and begins to leave town but is subdued by three pig-masked figures.

Fulfilling a request from John to take immediate action if Jill were to be harmed, Gordon shackles Hoffman in the same bathroom where he was tested before throwing away the hacksaw he had used to escape and sealing the door.

[9][10] On July 22, 2010, in an interview with USA Today the producers confirmed that Saw VII would officially end the film series.

[27] Tanedra Howard, the previous winner of Scream Queens, who appeared as Simone in Saw VI, reprised her role in the film.

[28] Chester Bennington, the lead vocalist of the alternative rock band Linkin Park, has a role in the film playing Evan, a white power skinhead.

[31] Saw 3D was shot entirely in RealD 3D, using the SI-3D digital camera system, rather than filming on set traditionally and later transferring the footage to 3D.

He acknowledged that this method would be used, but expressed an interest in shooting from the victim's perspective, similar to that of first-person shooter video games being rendered in 3D.

"[32] Commenting on the change to filming in 3D, Bell stated it would not affect his performance or methods of acting, noting that it would be an "interesting experience".

[45] Producer Oren Koules told horror news website ShockTilYouDrop.com that there are eleven traps in the film, the most ever in the franchise at that point.

[11] In Germany, its showing as a whole was banned from April 2012 until January 2013 because the Tiergarten District Court of Berlin noted that several scenes in the film violate the violence act §131 StGB.

[53][54] In Massachusetts, a branch of Showcase Cinemas showed Saw 3D instead of the animated film Megamind, which was being watched by a seven-year-old celebrating a birthday.

[55] On July 8, 2010, in some press materials for San Diego Comic-Con, the film was referred to as Saw 3D: The Traps Come Alive, which led to the media assuming it was the final name.

[56] The following day, Burg and Koules said that "The Traps Come Alive" was simply a tagline that had been misinterpreted as part of the title.

Koules said that if they included the seventh Roman numeral followed by "3D" (Saw VII 3D), it would have been "cumbersome" and not made the impact they wanted.

"[46] In the United Kingdom, a trailer shown during a broadcast of The Gadget Show led a 10-year-old viewer to register a complaint, saying it was "distressing" and "inappropriately scheduled".

In one scene of the trailer, people in a cinema become trapped to the seats by metal restraints with a hand coming through the screen pulling a person in.

The Advertising Standards Authority ruled it was "likely to cause distress to young children", and banned subsequent broadcasts from occurring before 21:00.

The website's consensus reads: "Sloppily filmed, poorly acted, and illogically plotted, Saw 3D leaves viewers trapped in the most lackluster installment of the series.

"[76] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 24 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable" reviews.

He went on to say, "Apart from these limb-pulling setpieces, tech credits appear fairly shoddy, as do any 3D effects that don't include flying viscera.

He said Saw 3D is "consistent both stylistically and thematically with previous editions", but said most of the film's traps lack the "Rube Goldberg-style cleverness that marked the series".

Whatever moral lessons were presented in the earliest Saw films seem to have been dispensed with as the movies grow more and more gruesome, with filmmakers caught up in 'What would it look like if somebody's jaw was ripped out, or their skin was glued to a car seat?'

He ended his review saying, "If you see the film in a theater equipped with RealD 3D and Dolby sound, you'll come away with a pretty good idea of what it would feel like to have flying body parts hit you in the face".

She went on to say, "It's also disappointing to watch a once-original franchise morph into a generic slasher series, in which random people are killed in banal ways just to up the body count" and closed her review with, "No matter how much money The Final Chapter makes over Halloween weekend, it's time to acknowledge that this game is over".

Morris closed his review by saying "This alleged final edition trashes the perverse morality of [Jigsaw's] legacy to make him the Jerry Springer of gore".