Saw IV (**1/4)

This movie begins unpleasantly enough, with the autopsy of one John Kramer. Mr. Kramer, known better as Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) to moviegoers, died along with his protegée in Saw III, but only the naive would have thought that meant the end of the series. As his ex-wife (Betsy Russell, seen briefly in the last installment) explains, John planned everything, even anticipating his own death. Or is it that yet another Rube Goldberg of torture devices has carried on his work? Whomever it is, he (or she) has been busy. There are several victims here. The first two are actually shown before the autopsy. A blinded man is chained to another whose mouth has been somehow sealed shut. One has the key, one the lock, and cooperation is not in the cards. If you’ve seen the other Saw films, you’ll know that this seemingly unrelated sequence will tie back into the story much later, and in fact everything here is tied together in a way that probably took a lot of thought on the part of the multiple screenwriters. (They are new, but the director, Darren Lynn Bousman, returns from the last two films, preserving the herky-jerky editing style and reliance on jarring mini-flashbacks to tie everything together.) Even more than before, the events of the last installment are tied into this one.

The main storyline relates to officer Rigg, who is being punished by Jigsaw (or whomever) for being a neglectful husband and having a hero complex. Lots and lots of microcassette tapes, typed instructions, and scrawls on the wall, and watching others suffer accompany his lesson. If you’ve missed these films, Jigsaw’s modus operandi is to teach a moral lesson by engaging the victim in a device from which the only escape involves a harsh variation on Hammurabi’s “eye for an eye” code. None of his devices fails.

Only occasionally does the film seem to want us to sympathize with the killer, as when a rapist must blind himself to survive; in that case the filmmakers are sure to make him obese and slovenly. Immoral simply isn’t enough. There is cleverness in these movies, but still I am repulsed by the idea that their appeal is as fictional snuff films. As an “objective” critic, I’d say that the section of the film in which we learn about Kramer’s conversion into Jigsaw is trite. I think that for those who haven’t seen Saw III, or don’t remember it well, certain aspects of the plot will be confusing, though I suspect it all fits together seamlessly. (It’s only the overall concept that’s ludicrous.) But it makes me wonder, is this really the sort of movie that people really want to see more of? As Jigsaw would say, make your choice.

IMDB link

reviewed 10/28/07