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Reagen Sulewski: The Saw producers didn't do anything "wrong" in that they didn't do anything differently from the last time - but a lot of industries make totally defensible decisions that end up in disaster because the marketplace changes on them. This franchise has been vulnerable for awhile - it's just taken the right challenger to make it happen.

Max Braden: Not to take anything away from Paranormal Activity, but at this point in a re-hash franchise you also have to face the fact that the audience is going to be more easily distracted by something shiny and new.

Tom Macy: There's no way Lionsgate could have seen Paranormal Activity coming. I'm tempted to say - oh, wait, I'm saying it - that they had to realize that at some point the clock would strike midnight and the well overflowing with profits that was the Saw movie formula would dry up (one sentence, two metaphors. Bam!). If they really wanted to keep the franchise going at this pace, and I'm sure they did, eventually some sort of reboot would have to take place to keep people interested. But honestly, if ain't broke... Saw VI will still give them a big return on their investment. And I think were it not for Paranormal Activity, which no one saw coming, they'd be right around where they usually are with an opening upwards of $25 million. Paranormal Activity is a once in a blue moon thing. It was a knock down for Saw, but it'll be back and more powerful than you could possible imagine. Okay, I don't know if that's true, just needed to get a Star Wars reference in there.

Michael Lynderey: I may sound unduly harsh here, but this is an utter disaster. Yes, every entry since part II has depreciated from its predecessor's total gross, but never to this degree - Saw VI's weekend take was only about $500,000 higher than the opening day of Saw V, and there's a good chance it won't finish with more than $30 million. Paranormal Activity should no doubt take some credit for these developments, but I think there's something else to it; we may be in another re-aligning period for the horror genre, with the surprise successes of Zombieland and Paranormal Activity, but the partial or complete failures of Sorority Row, Jennifer's Body, Pandorum, The Stepfather, and now the ringleader of horror in the 2000s, the Saw series - all in a span of two months. There's clearly some housecleaning going on here.

Brett Beach: Although it looks like a case of Paranormal Activity sapping almost exactly half of Saw VI's potential audience, I find it hard to believe it is as simple as that. They may both be "horror films" but apart from that, they have nothing in common in terms of gore quotient, scare quotient or style. I gather that the last installment of Saw really disappointed a lot of people who went to see it, even non-discriminating fans of horror films. The attempts to tie together every plot point in this series are somewhat admirable in a genre that often thrives on discontinuity and ignoring previous installments but at some point, it approaches ludicrosity. Although I haven't seen any but the first film, I did continue my annual tradition of going on to Wikipedia opening day and reading the first plot summary of the film posted. I think I should have a scorecard to keep track of it all!

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