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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?

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