If anyone calls the Saw series "torture porn," one of the most tiresome phrases to enter into criticism in a while, they're talking out of ignorance. Far from glorying in unpleasant and gratuitous violence with no "substance," these movies deal so much in substance that they nearly sink under its weight. But there are expert hands at work here: the convolutions of the series' plots increase with the creativity of the traps and the details of the moral system at work in them.
I say "moral system" because, as any aficionado of the series knows, the Jigsaw Killer is, or was, an eloquent gentlemen determined to "help" his victims by putting them through horrific trials that will expose both their coping resources and their fitness to remain alive. In Saw III, with the introduction of the loose cannon Amanda as surrogate killer (sorry for the spoiler, but I somehow doubt anyone who'd see this movie doesn't already know that), Jigsaw's moral schema fell into a chaos that Saw IV illustrates adeptly. The traps of Saw and Saw II played fair; III did not, and IV is the aggressive fermentation of the inexplicable, unnecessary violence of III, visited on past characters you never thought would be revived, and arbitrary characters who show up, suffer, and disappear as quickly.
While a priori arguments against the movie's violence fall short, the series yet pushes boundaries, and IV is perhaps the most unpleasant of the lot. The movie opens, aggressively, with an autopsy conducted on screen: a limpcadaver sliced and diced in close-up, this sending the clear message that humans will be treated as so much meat upon which to perform - essentially Amanda's moral vision, that which will predominate as the movie proceeds.
The plot revolves loosely around the travails of Lieutenant Rigg, played by one Lyriq Bent, as he moves around the city, through a series of Jigsaw's preternaturally-arranged human traps, in search of Detective Matthews, left alive at the end of Saw II, who by now has regressed into a grunting state of bare consciousness as he faces his own trap (involving a noose and a block of ice). Rigg is a bit of a red herring, honestly: the plot serves the dual function of showing off a series of traps that are creative as ever (eye-gougings, scalping, pierced arteries, self-mutilation, you know the drill) and tying up loose ends left by previous titles in the series. We get some ponderous and unconvincing glimpses into Jigsaw's background and what led him to kill; these scenes come off as a welcome excuse for Tobin Bell to exert his compelling charisma, which is fine.
Otherwise, the acting isn't up to par. Both I and II functioned as ensemble movies - the first, featuring a duo who played competently off one another; the second, a large cast who interacted even more effectively, adding up to a greater whole. III inaugurated the pattern of a whiny lost soul making his solitary way through grim ordeals, which this movie repeats, saved only by the burgeoning complexities of the story.
I had to see Saw IV a couple of times before I picked up on all that was going on. These are not weekend entertainments for teenagers though they work just fine in that capacity - they're sophisticated narrative engines, expertly developing increasingly baroque layers of imagery and characterization. In certain ways, the Saw series traces the evolution of an idea: Saw IV, while chronologically the most recent of the movies, offers the origin of the twisted moral forces at work in the series, nearly - deliberately - lost amid the exuberant, dim violence of the movie.
While this is probably the weakest movie in the series, simply in terms of characterization, acting, and the introduction of engaging new material, that means very little in terms of the movie's placement in the series hierarchy, which is more important. The Saw movies are not a traditional episodic horror franchise: they're intricately interconnected, and if nothing else, Saw IV is worth seeing as an eloquent rebuttal to the idea that this modern horror franchise is simpleminded, unsophisticated, and forgettable.
Jigsaw and his apprentice Amanda are dead. Upon the news of Detective Kerry's murder, two seasoned FBI profilers, Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) and A...More at HotMovieSale.com
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