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Halloween is upon us, which means one thing: Theaters will roll out films predicated on scares. With the inaccessibility of the year's creepiest film - the low budget cult hit Paranormal Activity - Hong Kong audiences have few choices. To that end two are available this weekend: the high school horror comedy Jennifer's Body and the latest in the lingering Saw series, innovatively titled Saw VI.

Will it ever end? Saw may not have started the so-called torture porn trend but it certainly brought it into the mainstream. That film's relative success brought inspired the nastiness of Hostel and The Devil's Rejects, and led directly to the trend of rebooting "classic" slasher films like the seminal The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Friday the 13th. Tastes have changed and it would seem we're collectively leaning toward unadulterated cruelty. True horror - based on genuine fear of the unknowable or the supernatural - is dying a slow death. The bottom line here is that if you've seen a Saw film, you've seen Saw VI. Does that make sense?

Holdover writers Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton and franchise editor-cum-director Kevin Greutert have concocted yet another vengeful "game" for the notorious Jigsaw (Tobin Bell). Where the original film's (heavy handed) point was to make its victims acknowledge their own hypocrisy and selfishness, the subsequent films have leaned more toward the Dexter model: Jigsaw is now a righteous punisher of the wicked. The crew has brought the series full circle, ending the film with some imagery from the first Saw, and it seems like episode six may be - just maybe may be - the last. That said, Jason Voorhees has died a million deaths and starred in 12 films. So what do I know?

With a nod to current events - powerful, equation-based medical insurers are on the proverbial rack - Saw VI sees Jigsaw at the helm of yet another unfeasibly elaborate scheme of just desserts, aided by his ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell) and Hoffman, the cop on his case (Costas Madylor, looking uncomfortably like Patrizio "The Italian" Buanne). None of it is particularly scary and it lacks the moral conundrum that should be a hallmark of Jigsaw's games; this is just preachy. However, to be fair, the film's clever final twist does remind us of our complacency and how easily the tropes we've come to rely on as viewers can be subverted.

Though Jigsaw died several installments ago, the film contrives endless flashbacks to keep the convincingly icy Bell around and take a stab at keeping the increasingly confusing timeline in order, something at which it just barely succeeds. Saw VI maintains the bleached out, grimy aesthetic, disjointed editing and Rube Goldberg-ian traps, but there's nothing really new here. Fans may enjoy it, but everyone else will be baffled.

Speaking of torture, high school monsters are a ripe metaphor and one that's been done before: think Teen Wolf and the underrated Canadian gem Ginger Snaps. While bated breath may be hyperbole when discussing the wait for wunderkind writer Diablo Cody's follow-up to the Oscar-winning Juno, there was some curious anticipation. Is she a flash in the pan or does she have real talent? The verdict is a resounding "Maybe."

Jennifer (Megan Fox, mostly playing herself) is a small town high school vamp who falls prey to a pretentious indie rock band of minions of Satan. When a sacrifice goes wrong (the film's single strongest sequence), Jennifer comes back as a flesh-eating demon with a taste for the local boys and makes her best friend Needy's (Amanda Seyfried) life hell. Director Karyn Kusama (the dreadful but visually engaging Aeon Flux) waters down the horror quotient that could have been wacky fun, but can't quite get a handle on the black comedy. What we get in Jennifer's Body is a bunch of half-baked ideas in a half-baked narrative.

The way teenaged girls relate to each other is only partially believable, given that Seyfried is supposed to be the "homely" one and much of Jennifer's behavior is obnoxious. Why are they friends? Better is the way Cody and Kusama turn the traditional gender roles in these kinds of films on their heads. Best is the exploration of the fear of sexual maturity in women and the currency found in physical beauty; but that hinges on casting: without Fox, who revels in her off-screen persona as a sex kitten, Jennifer's predatory nature would seem like a bigger act than it is. All are valid topics and all are skimmed over so thinly nothing gels to the point of genuine coherence.

Jennifer's Body is overwritten and smacks of an insufferable self-conscious desperation to be the conveyor of some new catchy phrases for the modern lexicon. Cody's wordplay was forced in Juno and here it's simply embarrassing: "Salty" as a compliment regarding someone's attractiveness is just not going to gain any traction, and the less said about "wetties" and "freaktarded" the better.

Jennifer's Body and Saw VI opened in Hong Kong Thursday.

(HK Edition 10/31/2009 page8)