When it comes to the Saw franchise, it's never all fun and games. Through five films, Jigsaw and his protégés have dished out their own brand of tough love – one that's resulted in a new lease on life for a lucky few, or, for the majority, an extremely painful death by some torturous contraption. In the upcoming Saw VI, it seems Detective Mark Hoffman has once again assumed the Jigsaw mantle in order to maintain his secret and eliminate all loose ends. In the following exclusive interview, Saw editor-turned-director Kevin Greutert sits down with FEARnet in a hotel near the film's Toronto shooting locations to discuss getting his hands on the popular horror series. Hit the jump now for our one-on-one chat!

Was directing always on your radar, and how did Saw VI come about?

I've wanted to make films ever since I was a kid, when I began murdering my siblings on Super 8. A lot of people enter film school dreaming about the same thing, but institutions have a way of leveling out your dreams. After graduating, I wound up becoming an assistant editor after an extended period of loafing and pilgrimage. I continued to write and make short films through the years, and tried to apply my filmmaking skills on the job as much as possible, even though I was essentially a drudge. So it was on the set of Disney's George of the Jungle 2 that I got to know producer Gregg Hoffman and he hired me to edit Saw based on a rather ambitious gag reel that I made for the George wrap party. After Saw was such a hit, I continued to put my name in for consideration to direct and it has finally paid off.

You've been a part of Saw since the beginning. What was your initial impression of this script as it began developing?

Developing the script for Saw VI with our producers and writers was the most difficult part of the entire process. I was hired based on my skills as an editor, not a writer or director, so it was challenging to make my voice heard in a room full of people with wildly different tastes and agendas. The process was not straightforward, to say the least, but I got happier and happier as our treatment began to take shape and there were more and more elements to the story, characters, and casting that were my own. So by the time we were in prep, I think I'd proven myself and it made the actual shooting of the film much easier than I thought it would be.

Many horror franchises lose steam early on. Going into the sixth installment, how do you keep things fresh and the fans invested?

I knew I had to answer some lingering questions and bring in fresh storylines. We also put a great deal of effort into thinking up new traps. This was very difficult. There were many long mornings here in Toronto during prep when I would accost production designer Tony Ianni or anyone else who I could grab, just to brainstorm these crazy nightmares. It's an odd way to start the week. There are a lot of story pieces that I wanted to include in a Saw movie if I ever got the chance to direct one, and you'll see some of those play out in October.

Can you tease a little? Where does this movie pick up and where does Erickson fit in?

I hate to say it, but just about everything I could say would constitute as a spoiler on some level. The essence of Saw is that the audience really shouldn't feel comfortable with anything about the experience, so giving away even basic information about the timeline can take away from the enjoyment of the movie. I get really upset when other people say too much, but at least it's not on the level of most movies, in which you see the entire storyline play out in the trailer before the movie even comes out.

At this point, what makes a good trap? What do you want to bring to the screen and that moment?

The main goal is to put the audience into the shoes of the victim and to get people to ask themselves "What would I do in this situation?" I try to pull out every trick I can to make the story feel as visceral as possible. I spend a lot of time with the actors discussing the physiology of fear and to make sure they behave the way people do when they're in terrible danger. And I think the best traps in the Saw series are ones with several levels to them. Jigsaw is a very devious man and he's trying to create as much mayhem as possible in the lives of his victims. As a filmmaker, I have to think the same way as him and really mess with people's minds as well as bodies.

Early on, the cube trap was talked about as the hardest one to pull off in Saw V. Is there any that compares to that in this movie?

We have some very ambitious scenes in Saw VI, some of the most ambitious in the series. I was very concerned for actor and crew safety during the shoot; but, for the most part, it went off without a hitch. There were a few close calls however.

How detailed are the traps in the script? Are some fleshed out on the fly?

It varies from scene to scene. Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, our two whacked-out writers, came up with some absolutely amazing stuff for this movie. It's not just a matter of thinking up sick shit to do to people; all the horror has to be in service of the themes and the storyline. So it's always best when the trap scenes are conceptualized simultaneously with the story, but it's really, really hard. Our story outline was not approved until very late, so the script was written quickly and there were a number of scenes for which we owe a lot to people like Tony.

Can you talk about how challenging it is to conceptualize these ideas into three-dimensional, functional working traps? 

It's so hard you wouldn't even believe it. As great as the design and creation of all this stuff is, it's really cinematic trickery that actually makes it work, and there's an unbelievably huge amount of seat-of-the-pants luck and ingenuity that comes into play on the day of the shoot. Something that looks like it's powered by a motor or gizmo is probably just getting pushed off screen by some guy with a two-by-four.

How conscious are you of the MPAA?

I'm conscious of them to the extent that they are the bane of my existence and I really resent having to recraft my work to make it safe for people who shouldn't be seeing Saw movies anyway. The genre is called torture porn for God's sake, so just let it be what it wants to be. That said, our relationship with the MPAA is a good one, and they're just people trying to get a job done. Getting your movie rated is a very strange and cryptic process, and I'm concerned that I'm going to have to change my edit a great deal in order to get the R rating needed to release the film. Maybe we'll get lucky; Saw II got the R rating the first time we submitted it, so it may just be a matter of what the board members had for breakfast as they came down Ventura Boulevard to work that morning.

James Wan said the first few movies were envisioned as a trilogy. Do you see the last three as a complete arc too?

I very much see Saw VI as the conclusion of a second trilogy.

Now that you have wrapped, how do you think this Saw compares to the previous ones?

I'm jumping for joy at how well the movie is turning out. Tomorrow, I will go into the editing room and for the next two months I will be immersed in what we have captured on film. If it really did turn out as well as I think it did, this Saw should rank as one of the best.