Although blessed with the kind of show-stopping splatter set pieces that dominated its immediate predecessor, the fourth SAW film in four years (with at least two more to come, ye gods!) feels a lot like a film too far. SAW III, with its operatic gore and elaborate sense of closure, played out like the perfect capper for the series, with SAW creator Leigh Whannell spectacularly offing the two villainous puppet-masters while bowing out on an appropriately sour note for the film’s hero. The new movie goes to extreme lengths to keep the franchise alive and therein lies its chief problem. SAW IV is over-plotted, to say the least, with shifting time periods, multiple flashbacks and a self-consciously twisting narrative that tries so hard to outsmart the audience that it ends up draining away much of the fun.
The SAW films have always been distinguished by being more intricately plotted and structurally ambitious than the average genre series, but SAW IV is too clever for its own good. A cluttered cast of both new and old characters includes the revelation of another conspirator in Jigsaw’s games, though, in IV the “games” are so densely contrived that, in reality, it would probably take a crack team of at least 12 evil geniuses to execute them. Just when IV’s plot was confused enough, the script climactically throws in another, pointlessly revived character from an earlier film while pulling off one twist that, in effect, gives this film – at least partially – the same ending as SAW III. Mmm…there’s consistency and continuity, and then there’s just repetition, guys!
SAW IV opens effectively, with the series’ traditional pre-titles un-pleasantries, immediately establishing that Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) won’t be pulling a Jason Vorhees-style back-from-the-grave feat to keep the series going for the sake of Lionsgate’s annual profit margin. For all fans of SAW III’s hideous, extended brain surgery sequence, the new film begins with a graphic Jigsaw autopsy that revels in close-up organ-removal and kick-starts the plot with the revelation of a tape secreted in his stomach. He may be dead, but the opening weekend grosses of SAW III mean that his “work” has only just begun.
SAW IV is, as expected, punctuated by the franchise’s chief calling card : elaborately designed traps in which characters are forced to mutilate their own bodies in a normally fruitless bid to stay alive. This time out, these traps – involving sleaze balls connected by the oily lawyer that helped get them off – act as distractions/tests for the hardened SWAT commander hero (Lyriq Bent) during his main mission. In reality, they are shoe-horned into the plot to give what would otherwise be a fairly gore-light story plenty of the crowd-pleasing sadism the core audience expects.
Bent has been rocked by the Jigsaw-induced deaths of numerous colleagues, including the grim fate of Dina Meyer, whose carcass is discovered early on in SAW IV. He is also obsessed with finding crooked cop pal Donnie Wahlberg (making a thankless, almost dialogue-free third-film contribution to the series), who at the start of the new film has been officially missing for six months. Bent becomes the latest pawn in Jigsaw’s games : he has 90 minutes to rescue Wahlberg and another captured cop from a typically deceptive trap that may kill both of them unless he can see beyond the obvious and outwit the puppet-master. Meanwhile, the FBI try to puzzle out the identity of Jigsaw’s inside collaborator, with suspicion falling on his ex-wife (Betsy Russell).
Fresh franchise screenwriters Marcus Dunston and Patrick Melton – who wrote the lighter FEAST last year – have succeeded in capturing the nihilistic in-house SAW style and relish the opportunity to misdirect the audience from the very start. Sadly, the countdown suspense tactic of the main plot – complete with 24-style deadline and digital clock displays – gets lost amidst a welter of sub-plots and an excess of characters. Bent is a charismatic protagonist, but the movie’s efforts to give Tobin Bell’s still-marvelous soft-spoken master-villain as much screen time as possible (while also delivering a spectacular death every 10 minutes) keeps the hero off-screen for long periods and minimizes our involvement in his plight.
The film is shot, cut and scored in the fashion SAW fans will be wholly familiar with by now, with little in the way of variation. Its biggest draw, and its most enjoyable aspect is in the grim ways it finds to maim its cast. Key characters die suddenly and horribly to keep the plot moving, while hastily introduced losers suffer as much mutilation allowed by an R rating. People are scalped and dismembered, eyeballs are impaled and the showstopper gives one poor schmuck the chance to free himself from his shackles if he leans his face forward into a nest of Krueger-style blades. (Just to surprise us and bring some light relief into the pervasive gloom, one time Jigsaw should offer a relatively easy conundrum for his poor-bastard victims, perhaps a random “Cake or death” option is in order…?)
It’s all suitably bloody and slick and never dull….but this SAW shows the series starting to crack under the pressure of delivering a new movie every Halloween.
-Steven West
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
