Saw IV - Finally

Written by Gillman on October 31, 2007 – 1:43 pm

My apologies to all that voted (and anyone else that just wanted to read), this should have been posted Friday night. However with the nightmare that my life has been the past five days this is the first time I’ve been able to even think about it. Onto the review…

A couple of points on which to begin:

1) In the madness of the last few days I lost my notebook with all of my Saw IV notes. So all of my brilliant thoughts that I jotted down during the film my be lost forever.

2) I hated Saw (1) and refused to see 2 or 3.

I can’t really compare Saw IV to the las two films (obviously) so I have no idea how it stacks up with those, but I can certainly say that I liked this one better than the first. That’s right, this is one of those amazingly rare sequels that is better than the first. Of course the first was a moronic piece of shit with plot holes I could navigate a zeppelin through and one of the cheapest twist endings in the history of film. This one is better than that.

So anyway, this black dude, Detective Rigg (obviously named an homage to Mel Gibson’s “Lethal Weapon” character, yet black. oooooh) gets sucked into the now deceased Jigsaw’s game after charging into a crime scene and neglecting his wife. Is anyone else annoyed by the preachy serial killer? I have to admit, a sanctimonious murderer is a pretty funny idea, but not when the writer’s take his mission so fucking seriously. Basically Rigg now has to run around collecting Jigsaw’s messages on the little tape recorders and collecting victims for him in order to save the lives of Donnie Wahlberg and Costas Mandylor, two other cops that a stuck in Jigsaw’s trap.

But, I thought that the point of this whole thing was to teach him not to save lives? He is supposed to learn not to save lives by being forced to save lives. Well written.

The only real engaging thing with this movie is Jigsaw’s back story. Even though it doesn’t really pan out and tell us why he’s so batshit crazy, it does attempt to clear up some of the questions from past films. Where does he gets those wonderful toys? Easy, he’s the most brilliant engineer EVER. How can he have all the decrepit buildings to put his victims? Easy, he owns TONS of decrepit buildings.

There is no real point in analyzing the performances in a movie like this. Most of them are nothing to write about, though Tobin Bell (Jigsaw) and Costas Mandylore (cop guy) were alright. Every other performance was about as flat as a female triathelete. The directing is frenetic to the point of distraction and pretty much what every other horror director goes for these days. If I could get just one message to every horror director out there these days it would be that scaring people with sudden loud noises is NOT FUCKING SCARY!

And neither is virtual “buckets” of CGI blood. UGH!

There were so many eye-rolling moments in this movie that one of my retinas detached. There were plenty of plot holes, and plenty of the stupidest fucking decisions made by characters that should know better. I was interested enough to follow the movie, but never really gave a shit about anyone in it, nor did I ever really care what happened. That is a major flaw in any movie. Better than the first is not really any kind of compliment here, but it is the truth. However, I can absolutely say that if you are a douche-bag teenager in a Slipknot hoodie you will LOVE this movie.

Rating: 4/10

I had to put something good in here: