Rating:

This fourth installment in the Saw series takes the dreadfully familiar “been there, done that,” sentiment that strikes all horror franchises to a level all its own.

Not only are the regrettable torture scenes familiar, pointless, and, for the first time, unimaginative, but a decision was made to have the events of this film occur at the same time as the third one. This decision served absolutely no logical nor thematic purpose to the story told, but instead acts as nothing more than a gimmicky way to trump up yet another relentlessly abstract “twist” ending.

Like the re-hashed torture devices, the acting in this film reaches a new low. Costas Mandylor as detective Hoffman makes you think you’re watching a bad softcore porn story on Showtime rather than a multi-million dollar movie franchise. Thank god the random assortment of detective-looking actors they call a “cast” have absolutely no chemistry with one another, or else you’d spend your two hours waiting for Mandylor to inexplicably take of his pants to familiar “Baw-Chicka-Wah-Wah” music.

How did they end up making a Saw IV, anyway, when The Jigsaw Killer is dead? Good question. Turns out he’s far more active as a dead man than he was as a living person. As the story gets less imaginative, more and more exposition is needed, and we find in this film he has scattered no less than 15 different tape recordings and instructional notes around the city. Couple that with the idea that we’re watching a film that supposedly occurs concurrent with the third one, along with all its elaborate hoaxes, and it’s a concept worthy of even our most disdainful eye rolling.

Now, I would have to argue that the main appeal of the Jigsaw character in the first film was not the elaborate methods of his killing, nor the pseudo-philosophical lessons he tried to teach, but rather the apparent depth of his psychopathy and the mystery surrounding his shrouded identity.

In the fourth installment, however, perhaps out of boredom, they decided to explain who Jigsaw the man is, and what drove him to kill. He has a cold, mysterious, suspicious ex-wife whose purpose in the movie never becomes clear, except to tell us Jigsaw’s backstory. Namely, his story is that he was happy and in love, but a junkie she was trying to help in her clinic caused her to have a miscarriage.

This accident apparently drove John the man to become Jigsaw the killer, ruthlessly torturing not just society’s derelicts but the detectives whose job it is to protect the common good.

And this absurd methodology is never more abused for our pleasure than through the tragic character of detective Rigg, played by Lyriq Bent. His story is that of a man who wants nothing more than to save people’s lives, but apparently Jigsaw sees fault in this, and challenges the detective to stop saving people. Then there are a series of trials where he nonchalantly does things–absolutely horrendous things–that such a man would clearly never do by choice.

What can I say? His story is as pointless and absurd as all the rest, but at least he makes us feel something–he makes us feel sorry for him, and we regret that the filmmakers would ever expect their audience to believe or even be entertained by such preposterous a sequence of events.

And then we all die. The film has several instances in which it hints that this is the “last” installment–several references can be enjoyed to “The Final Test” and “The Last Game.” Of course, there’s also a handy audio tape that informs us this is “only the beginning”–just in case this horrible fourth film makes money at the box office.

Let us hope that it does not, and the former clues are the final pieces to such a wasteful and convoluted Jigsaw puzzle.

If you don’t like Saw IV, then you will also totally hate:

If You Hated This, You Will Also Totally Hate:

• Saw
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
• Halloween in September
• Halloween (2007)
• Thoughts on Indy 4