This review may contain spoilers.
It’s rare these days that I have to spoiler tag my reviews, mainly because I try not to get *too* deep into the plot when I talk about why a film works or doesnt work, because I believe that part of the enjoyment of the art of film is the timing in which it reveals itself to the audience.
However; with ‘Saw 4’ I kind of HAVE to dive into spoilers because it forms a big basis as to why I dissapointed by it…
The plot? ‘Saw 4’ opens a short time after the events of ‘Saw 3’ and we find Jigsaw in the morgue being Autopsied. cue gratuitous gore sequence in which its revealed that in his closing moments, Jigsaw recorded a final tape, sealed it in wax and ate it. they find it in tact in his stomach. At which point (unbeknownst to the audience until the 3rd act which isnt clever non linear storytelling…it’s bollocks in its own right…) we then flash back in time to the beginning of ‘Saw 3’ and specifically the rib cage death as the cops find the corpse still fairly fresh (and rat infested)
The main drive of the film follows a cop named ‘Riggs’ as he is set a series of traps by Jigsaw. the mission is simple. Riggs is given 90 minutes to locate 2 of the cops who dissapeared in previous ‘Saw’ movies before their traps kill them. But he’s told not to intervene or attempt to rescue them, as they need to solve the puzzles by themselves. He’s then given a clue that will lead to their locations.
This sets Riggs on a journey across the city, where he’s put into several ‘tests’ with known felons and asked to basically either put them in one of Jigsaw’s traps, or to not help them and let them figure out how to escape, or die trying.
Riggs being a good cop generally tries to do everything in his power to save these people, while also following Jigsaws rules. garnering mixed results.
While this is going on, two detectives are on the hunt for Jigsaws secret hideout and bring his ex-wife in for questioning, which is basically just an excuse to give a massive ‘lore’ dump about ‘pre psycho’ Jigsaw and it’s the way the cops find Jigsaws hideout in the final act.
Speaking of which, the final act finds Riggs and the detective looking for Jigsaw breaking into Jigsaws hideout, at which point it reveals that we’re actually now synched up to the end of ‘Saw 3’ with the husband looking for his wife and the drama between Jigsaw and Amanda unfolding, but this time from different angles.
Riggs finds the cops with 1 second to spare, but in opening the door to where they’re held, it instantly triggers a trap that kills them both and in the chaos, Riggs kills another person, Jigsaws former lawyer, who’s been put in the room and told to overlook the cops for the full 90 minutes, at which point he can release everyone and they can all leave.
Riggs kills the lawyer in a panic and it’s revealed that theres actually a THIRD accomplice to Jigsaw, and its ONE OF THE COPS WHO WAS KIDNAPPED!?!
This rogue cop gets up, locks Riggs in the room while he bleeds out, traps the other detective who came to find riggs in a cold store with Jigsaw and Amandas corpses and then heads out. Fin.
NOW. While I will say that I appreciate that the script DOES have a more structured format here (it doesnt feel like ‘Saw 3’ which basically felt like someone wrapped all the deleted material they could get their hands on from ‘Saws 1 &2’ around a 40 minute movie that had been padded out to an hour. It brings with it significant problems of its own that did annoy me.
On the positives, at 93 minutes, this thing does have solid act structuring, the tones now pretty much perfected, the characters have a fair bit more depth than previous entries and I feel once again like this thing *does* have some entertaining moments dotted throughout the runtime.
However, I have to admit, I found AT LEAST the first hour of this thing deathly dull. It doesnt really pick up till the closing 10 minutes, The characters, while more complex and slightly better written just…dont have nearly enough charisma or personality draw to really win me over…and probably the thing I took the most issue with. Its a 90 minute film that seemingly exists to retroactively fix 1 plot hole.
Seemingly, this whole movie just exists to explain how some of the more manual labour roles in Jigsaws traps happened. 93 minutes of the audiences time, play by play going back through the last movie and for what? a few scenes of ‘pre jigsaw era jigsaw’ that, if anything; in my opinion lessens the impact of john Kramers character, all building to the reveal that this whole thing happened as the B-plot to ‘Saw 3’ and that now theres another guy (who has ZERO hints at even existing in the previous 2 movies) who’s running around killing people.
It felt to me like some kind of ‘Star wars special edition’ bullcrap where they go back into a pre-existing plot and digitally insert a new character with no previous references just appease some continuity errors the fans have drawn up. it was lame that the whole film just builds to that, and even lamer that the majority of the main plot seemingly is undercut just to make that the main point of reason.
Equally; I wasnt particularly happy with the way the writers have started to warp Jigsaws sense of morality in this. actual honest and good people die in this thing for almost no reason at all and what reasons are dredged up feel petty and weird. Did Johns lawyer really have to die? no not really…did the wife who was being abused by her husband have to put up with being impaled in order to teach her a lesson? I dont thinks so…
And its a real shame that the script is so dissapoint in my opinion because outside of the story its trying to tell, the film on the whole is actually pretty decent visually.
The direction is arguably some of the best seen in the series so far, with genuinely interesting styalizations, of note being the utterly fantastic transition edits they use in this film, such as a woman being thrown through a window in an apartment that seamlessly transitions into a door being opened into a police office. That was genuinely some of the most interesting editing i’ve seen in a contemporary horror film of this time, and they do a few little moments like that which are just wonderful.
Lighting camera and cast are all performing the best the can, theres a real synergy present here and I feel like this is a film where, on a technical level they really finally nailed everything they wanted to do with these kind of movies. While they still do lean a little *too* heavily on post production colour correction to help create a sense of styalization, at least the ‘piss’ filters been taken off for most of this film and instead we end up with some kind of combination of grimey toxic green and grimey blue. Though, in fairness to them, they are now once again beginning to try and styalise more with in camera visuals, which were greatly recieved.
The cine is sharp here, solid compositional choices, decently coloured, well blocked and impactful. Johns Autopsy scene at the beginning is gruesome, but the use of B-roll and solid editing really helps push it WELL past anything a lot of the film industry would dare approach for the time.
This is easily the best edited of the franchise so far, it breaths near perfectly, theres the amazing transition work dotted throughout, they minimise that weird rapid smash cut editing thing once again to just the traps (which I was very appreciative of) and the whole thing hangs together really well. Though, as an aside; I will say that the traps in this entry are quite underwhelming, a lot of them are ultra basic compared to whats come before it and most of them are over in a minute or two. I was always more of a fan of the longer drawn out traps that slowly get gruesome rather than the ‘you have 1 minute and then your legs are being ripped off’ type.
On the performance front, while I cant say there are any utterly astounding perfomances from the new cast members. Tobin Bell once again steals the show as John, hes a quiet but menacing actor and via the flashbacks we really do get that extra insight into his increasingly erratic mind and the things that push him over the edge. This film has is more subdued than others, but has some really solid moments with him. I still think at this point that ‘Saw 3’ has been his absolute peak. But then again I still have 6 or 7 more of these to go so…only time will tell.
The scoring is much more subdued as well here, and im SO glad they’re finally moving away from that awful metal/grungey rock stuff that ate up the first 2 or 3 movies. a traditional horror style scoring suits these movies SO much better in my opinion and here, while I cant say I was totally won over, the more subtle approach definitely went a good way to getting me there.
I’m conflicted about ‘Saw 4’ while technically this is probably the most impressive of the films to date, the script is deathly dull, undercuts its main plot for the sake of a fairly uninteresting plot twist and has less than interesting kills that really didnt do it for me. it’s very much ‘Nice video, shame about the song’ Audience members coming to this one without knowledge of the last 3 films will be utterly lost in the ‘in references’ and waves of random ‘lore’ it decides to drop in. It has similar problems to ‘Saw 3’ but does seem to at least FEEL like a real movie.
If you’ve seen the first 3 and find the canon and lore interesting, you’ll probably really get on with this purely for all the tea thats spilt about Jigsaw and his ex-wife, if your trying to watch this as an actual work of cinema, a coherent story driven film, and the lores a secondary to that. You’ll probably be bored out of your mind for a good chunk of the runtime.
Much like ‘Saw 3’ I cant see myself just sticking this on to watch independently. As part of a ‘Saw marathon’ it makes sense to exist. But its shallow and totally incoherent as a standalone work.
TYTD Reviews 