The television ad for Saw IV creepily assures viewers that if it's time for Halloween, it must be time for Saw. This also means the white-haired, mad scientist known as Jigsaw is setting more gruesome traps, causing more screams, and spewing more morality-fueled indignation through the mouth of a puppet than necessary. Eventually, this movie becomes what most horror sequels become: an exercise in too much that results in far too little.
Jigsaw (Bell) and his apprentice, Amanda (Smith), are now dead. And as coroners dig through Jigsaw's lifeless body, they find a cassette tape inside his stomach, revealing — surprise, surprise — that his torture-filled games will be played from beyond the grave. Enter FBI agents Strahm (Patterson) and Perez (Karkanis) who — after discovering the mutilated body of Detective Kerry (Meyer) and disappearance of Detective Hoffman (Mandylor) — become the newest participants in Jigsaw's catch-me-if-you-can routine. This often entails the investigating of gut-splatter crime scenes and interrogating Jigsaw's ex-wife (Betsy Russell), whom the FBI suspects is holding clues and may be an accomplice. All these CSI–like antics parallel a story involving SWAT Commander Rigg (Lyriq Bent), who is mourning the loss of his murdered comrades to the point of obsession. Rigg is abducted himself and thrown into Jigsaw's newest maze, forcing him to confront his obsession, face lots of sickly-cleaver torture traps and act as an essential piece of the latest puzzle.
To its credit, the movie never falls short on showy death sequences and Jigsaw's part as the anti-Jason Voorhees. Whether it's chains tearing off the limbs of an accused rapist, knives piercing a man's face, or a couple connected by metal rods impaling both their bodies, gorehounds won't feel cheated. Screenwriters Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan (writers of the indie bloodbath Feast) also make sure that Jigsaw remains a smarter-than-average killer, confusing the agents trailing him and justifying the death of those who cross him. In other words, there's no hockey mask or machete involved here. "Feel what I feel," bloodied the wall in one scene; Jigsaw wants Rigg to understand him, not just obey him. In this way, Rigg becomes a more appealing character than just another eventual victim. The screenwriters, as well as director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II & III), also flesh out a well-detailed backstory as to how and why the twisted mind of Jigsaw came to be. It takes up a good chunk of the flick, but begs the question of whether or not we should have seen it two sequels ago.
Although, without Jigsaw's fascinating history (as well as the film's flashbacks and connections to the first three movies) Saw IV may have fallen too hard on its face. The only character even remotely interesting is the villain, while the rest of the cast runs through mundane lines loaded with melodrama and simplicity. The puzzle pieces begin to fit, and you're hoping that the end result, or twist, is something worthy of a Saw V. Sadly, it isn't, with the ending causing little more than a momentary blurt of "Is that it?" Though the series seemed like a great concept three years ago, it's now just a repeated assault on the senses, designed strictly for the gross-out crowd, and disturbs rather than scares.
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Copyright © 2008 Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., Inc.