Saw IV Review

By KC Morgan

The Saw horror movie franchise is the filmmaking equivalent of reality TV’s Survivor: the first time you watched, it was totally fresh and interesting and unlike anything else you’d ever seen before. As new installments started to appear, however, it all started to seem somehow horribly repetitive despite “twists” designed to give it that fresh feeling. Don’t get me wrong - I love a great, gory horror flick as much as the next person. But mutilation can only take moviegoers so far.

For me at this point, the Saw movies are kind of like the last chip in the bag. You polish off a snack and feel quite satisfied - until you notice there’s just one more chip. So you shrug your shoulders and swallow it down - but another last-chip-in-the-bag appears. It’s no longer that I have some great desire to watch the latest Saw movie, but I’ve already had all those other chips. So, sure, I watched the fourth installment to the series because I’m a horror movie watcher who can’t stand to let a sequel go by. But honestly, the whole experience drained ninety-five minutes out of my life and could potentially do the same to yours.

In the first scene, viewers are quite precisely taken through a non-verbal autopsy as the Saw movie villain is sliced and diced to bits. (The way he is treated in that scene, just in case you want to feel quite uneasy, is the way many of us will be treated when we die). The gore starts right away, so then we get a little bit of plot and catch up with the cops who are perpetually working on Jigsaw cases.

Soon we are following one of the cops (Rigg), who takes us from one grisly scene to another, even as we keep tabs on two completely unbelievable FBI agents (Agent Strahm and Agent Perez, quite unconvincingly portrayed by Scott Patterson and Athena Karkanis, respectively). By the way, you’re supposed to care about what happens to these cops.

Rigg is bent on saving Detective Matthews (whom fans saw tortured in preceding Saw movies), a cause he should have called lost long ago. Instead of giving up his obsession he gives into it, and soon is following Jigsaw’s every single request despite his own moral fiber (assuming he does have some). Viewers are treated to some of the Jigsaw back story, completely irrelevant pieces of script that don’t matter when the character in question is not just dead but splayed open on an autopsy table. All the scenes in-between the general gore seem forced, contrived and honestly quite poorly crewed - I mean, can we get a lighting director on set please?

The movie ends with a totally predictable plot twist that completely falls short of earlier Saw shockers, but even so the stage is set for yet another sequel. If you’re looking forward to another great story and more intriguing plot developments, you’re going to get let down. If you’re looking for a movie that makes you grimace and crawl toward the couch to get away from the blood on screen, Saw IV is for you. Lots of blood, lots of pain, and one particularly memorable scene involving blonde hair makes this a horror success just the same. But then, true horror fans know enough not to expect some fantastic story.

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