Skip to main content

Saw IV (2007): Life (of a Sort) After Death

 



Well it is that time. Saw IV. Huzzah.

Okay it honestly isn’t that bad but like always, we start with what doesn’t work. While I believe in the last installment I complimented a once again returning Darren Lynn Bousman’s more varied angles and lighting choices, but a lot of this film is just pure garish yet somehow filthy neon lights, pukey greens and blinding reds. Likewise, this film has a couple of the most jarringly bad transitions I’ve ever seen a mainstream film attempt and the editing seems to have regressed back to seizure inducing standards of the first couple of movies.

There are so much more law enforcement characters jammed into this film that its hard to really give a damn about any of them or their personal journeys, and a couple don’t even have names, just a random scene or two. While I appreciate that the well was starting to run dry on Jigsaw lore for the flashbacks but they couldn’t really lose that key aspect of the film, a melodrama about his happy-turned-tragic marriage and lost child really doesn’t add anything to the proceedings and just awkwardly jams up the other narratives and bloats the film more than it needs. All of the tests on the main cop are convoluted and don’t really tell us much about him nor the victims even in the end. They bring back Donnie Wahlberg just to be sad and disgusting and have a lot of close ups of his feet and literally have almost no lines in the entire film, just wallowing that I assumed he filmed for like a few hours on a weekend. While I won’t spoil it, the eventual reveal of the Secret Apprentice was telegraphed from their first moment on screen and is completely obvious.

This is however a pretty solid film for the gorehounds of which I can often be one, even if I’m more a Tom Savini slasher type of guy than I am the torture porn kind. The opening is a wonderfully explicit autopsy, and with each trap in the film it keeps delivering in endless bloodshed and some squeamish situations even if I don’t think many of these traps are quite as clever as some in the past and only one really had a strong relation to the crimes. This film knows what it is and doesn’t pull its punches often. Scott Patterson, whom I adored growing up a big fan of the Gilmore Girls, does a decent job playing generic hardass FBI Agent because somehow it took this long for the FBI to take over the case. Justin Louis, who’d later go on to a solid career pulling one or two episode gigs on various American TV shows, and Betsy Russel also do solid jobs.

As you can probably tell, this one was probably my least favorite of this whole series rewatch so far, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t enjoy it as a very sloppy but weirdly ambitious mess with solid meat and potatoes for the fans. It very likely gets worse down the line than this based off my hazy memories, so I’m just gonna be happy that there was still a fair amount to enjoy if ya know, you enjoy this sort of thing. Plus, it looks like every male is wearing a hairpiece, and what isn't fun about that?

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ivan the Terrible, Part 1 (1944) - Uncomfortably Stalinist, Visually Astounding

  I know that I usually start reviews with a personal anecdote of some sort, but this one is kind of a head scratcher. My only real ties in my life to the Soviet Union are just a lifelong, morbid fascination with the Cold War era and rocking a hammer and sickle pin on my backpack as middle schooler into punk rock. However, I do like a lot of Soviet era cartoons which are a special kind of surreal and I really like some film movements of Soviet states on the fringe, and what Soviet films I’ve seen often have very strong and striking visuals. So when I saw that Ivan the Terrible Parts 1 and 2 were on Max, I couldn’t turn down the opportunity to do something different for this blog even if it might be a bit shorter than my typical review. Obviously, the biggest and most valid criticism of the film is how deeply unsubtle it is in most ways, but particularly when it comes to defending and propagating the ideals of Stalinism. As a member of the left, I’m well aware there are factions t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Scream (1996) - Williamson Dialogue Hasn't Always Aged Well, Though Iconic All the Same

  My mom grew up among the slasher golden era of the 80s, so she adored the genre and many of the 2000+ VHS tapes she had around for a lot of my childhood were various slasher franchises and what we didn’t have by 7 or 8 I was begging my parents to rent for me from Hollywood Video or Movie Starz on a regular basis. So it goes without saying that Scream coming in and revitalizing the entire genre’s popularity for a handful of years was a big deal in our household and I was probably very young the first time I saw it which was likely not long after it came out on tape in probably ‘97, same with the sequels in later years. I then proceeded to watch it so many times across my childhood well into adulthood that practically every line and scene and even delivery are memorized at that point, which made stepping back to write as objective a review as I can somewhat difficult but I found the more of a critical eye I applied to it the more it worked out. As always starting with the negat...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Cabin in the Woods (2012) - Funny, Fun, and a Little Bit Insufferable

  The late 00s and early 10s were a pretty good time to be somebody who loved cult horror films with a sense of humor. You had the likes of Trick r Treat, Drag Me to Hell, and my favorite at the time which was The Cabin in the Woods. Whether it was on pay cable or early streaming, the film became a regular fixture in the years I mostly just spent my time frequently re-watching the same movies and drinking far too much beer. Because of that, I’ve gone some years without watching it very frequently cause I got kind of burnt out on it in my 20s but I had this former Blockbuster rental Bluray copy that cost less than 2 bucks so I figured why not see how well the film holds up? The thing that hasn’t held up so well is how smugly in love with its own dialog and cleverness the film is in a way that immediately signals that Joss Whedon was a writer on it. There’s a certain too cute quality to a lot of Whedon’s projects that have made me not like them as much as other people do, sorry to ...
Post a Comment
Read more