Saw IV

  • 2007-11-07
  • by Tim Ochser

BLOODBATH: Like its predecessors in the Saw series, thislatest installment is all about inventive, gruesome ways to kill.

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

The "Saw" movies are being knocked out with remarkable speed. After the success of the first one, someone got seriously greedy. And before you could say "see-saw," we were up to number four.
The problem is, however, it's extremely hard for me to say anything about "Saw IV." If you've seen one "Saw," you've seen them all. "Saw IV" is no better or worse than its three predecessors. Indeed, there were moments I wasn't sure which "Saw" I was seeing, so alike are they all.
But since I am paid to review movies, I had better at least give it a shot. John, alias Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), died at the end of "Saw III." Jigsaw was an old man who devised mind-bogglingly elaborate ways of killing people he adjudged to be unworthy of living because they weren't grateful to be alive.

"Saw IV" begins with an autopsy of Jigsaw's body which is so graphic that it had the audience swooning in collective disgust. When the pathologist gets to the stomach he discovers a tape concealed inside. Naturally, he plays it. And lo and behold, we hear Jigsaw announcing in his s-l-o-w-e-d down voice that the games have only just begun.
You may ask why Jigsaw didn't just mail the tape to the police instead of swallowing it. Well, that's the sort of man he is. As his name suggests, Jigsaw likes a good riddle.
And so the violence begins. Detectives race around trying to save somebody or other, while somebody or other gets killed.

Here is a typical example of Jigsaw's handiwork: Two men wake up in a disused, post-industrial sort of building. One's eyes are sewn shut, while the other's mouth is sewn shut. Both men are attached by chains to a medieval-looking contraption that starts pulling them to their death (by squashing).
Unable to communicate, they can't cooperate to try and get out of their pickle and end up killing each other in blind, dumb fear. Jigsaw always gives his victims a way out of his fiendish contraptions, even if it means losing a limb in the process as a moral lesson.

The first "Saw" film was mildly entertaining if only for its novel premise. But the story is so wearyingly familiar and stupid that it is simply irritating. One almost wants to see the filmmakers behind this unpleasant nonsense get a taste of their own sadistic medicine.

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