Film Review: Newest ‘Saw’ installment continues glorious gore
Crowd-pleasing Halloween movie series “Saw” has not lost its distinctive touch.
“Saw IV” continues surprising moviegoers with the gross-out devious twists.The opening scene starts the gore. Evil mastermind Jigsaw’s corpse lies on an autopsy table. Even dead and cut to pieces, Jigsaw is able to speak from beyond the grave with a tape recorder hidden in his body carrying a terrifying message.
“You think it’s over?” Jigsaw asks. “You think you’re safe? You are wrong. I promise my work will continue.”
“Oh man, are we ready for this?” a person in the crowd shouted at the premiere. The audience responded with sharp whistles and shouts mingled in with loud clapping.
SWAT Commander Rigg (Lyriq Bent) is the key player in Jigsaw’s latest project. Rigg’s instinct to save people interferes with Jigsaw’s belief that people need to save themselves. To get this lesson across to Rigg, Jigsaw traps Rigg in a complicated web where his decisions affect the outcome of all of Jigsaw’s victims.
The whole point of Jigsaw’s work is for the guilty to learn their lesson in an extreme fashion always involving pain. The kidnapped victims are trapped in harrowing situations according to their misdeeds.
In one scene, a man who abused his daughter is pinned to his wife, who was silent about the abuse. The woman can save herself if she takes the bolts out, but in the process kills her husband. If she doesn’t take action, she will bleed to death. Jigsaw’s lesson mirrors that in real life she needed to take action.
Jigsaw’s lessons are as much a part of the entire “Saw” series as the gore is. “Saw IV” is no exception.
In past “Saw” movies, there were people crawling around in a pit of needles. In this one, someone has to choose between keeping their eyes or their limbs. Some of the gorier parts make you want to puke, in the best way.
There is hardly any time for the victims to think about their predicament. Jigsaw calmly enlightens the victim of their crimes and why they are there with a tape recorder. He then explains how they can save themselves by following a list of rules in a set time limit.
The complexity of the traps is ingenious. They inflict damage to the winner, yet still allow them to live if they pass the test. Fluid transitions between scenes up the suspense even more.
Only moments away from death, the will to survive takes precedence over being disembodied or disfigured. Desperation can be felt radiating from the victims. It’s survival of the fittest. The situations ask the victims how much their lives are worth and how much they want to live.
However, this is not just a replay of past “Saw” films. “Saw IV” weaves details from previous “Saw” movies to give the entire story more depth. The audience finally finds out about Jigsaw the man before he was Jigsaw the killer.
“Saw IV” successfully continues with the classic “Saw” formula of intense suspense, blood and gore and a surprise ending, but still manages to feel unique.
‘Saw IV’
Release Date: Oct. 26
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Starring: Scott Patterson, Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Costas Mandylor, Justin Louis
Genre: Suspense/horror and sequel
Rating: R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture throughout and for language
Rating: A
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on Monday, October 29th, 2007 at 10:59 pm and is filed under Arts & Entertainment, Film Reviews.
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