Saw IV: Movie Review (2007)

Time to cut the cord.

With the release of "Saw IV," the most convoluted and preposterous film yet in the burned-out "Saw" series, director Darren Lynn Bousman once again puts his audience's necks on the chopping block and shows them no mercy.

The bloodletting begins at the start.

Stretched out on a mortuary slab is Jigsaw himself (Tobin Bell), who is about to undergo an autopsy of the most graphic sort--and we're not just talking about the surgical gutting that ensues, but of how Bousman offers us unparalleled access to Tobin's genitals, which are on full display here.

Lucky us? Not so much.

This middling film then collapses into a series of flashbacks and flashforwards, the lot of which are so dizzying, you might want to bring your favorite MENSA member to see if they can make sense of it.

That is, of course, assuming they stay awake.

This base, damp, soulless movie offers everything you expect, right down to the lack of quality and the idea that horror is just gore, not well-measured suspense. In it, the series' expected wasteland of deadly traps abound, but so do twists upon twists, with the film dipping freely into all that came before it to explain away why Jigsaw is the way he is.

Donnie Wahlberg, Angus Macfadyen, Costas Mandylor and Lyriq Bent return from previous films, so it's good to know that they've sold out, they've at least covered their mortgages. As for the film's denouement (doesn't French make the movie sound classier?), the audience at my screening rightfully was having none of it. A few boos ensued.

In the end, though, after all the pig masks, the literal hairpulling and endless slaughtering the movie offers, the film's advertising campaign turns out its greatest threat: "If it's Halloween, it must be 'Saw.'" If Hollywood allows that to be the case with yet another film, we all lose.

Rated R. Grade: D


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