You don't need me to tell you that the blood and guts in Saw IV is, well, a bit grotesque. After all, the torture series has made evisceration its bread and butter, if you will, and it's probably a little bit late to slap that sin back into Pandora's Box. So, Saw = gore. Presumably, if you've read even this far, you're all in for goopy blood and entrails and whatnot. It's your bread and butter too, you see.
So Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and his faithful companion Amanda (Shawnee Smith) are no longer among the living, but their "work" lives on, in an unending conga line of sequels. In this one, two veteran FBI agents join the local cops to try to figure out who's killing cops, especially with the supposed mastermind quite sincerely deceased.
As with the first three movies, people are maimed and killed in variously creative ways, all part of some posthumous scheme cooked up by Jigsaw. Or by some accomplice who's carrying on the evil work. The good news? It's all interconnected with the events of Saw III. The bad news? Saw III was somewhat confusing, and this one blows it out of the water in terms of murkiness and who the hey is doing what and when. But we do see a lot of the same basic concepts, like a victim wakes to find himself in some sort of diabolical trap, and he must suffer incredible pain if he wants to live. I have to admit that the devices themselves - and the plots they forward - are pretty ingenious. In one scene, a husband and wife wake to find themselves impaled on a series of sharp sticks. That is, a stick enters the woman's body and exits, and then enters the man's body. The backstory is that she was physically abused by him for many years, and now she literally holds his life in her hands. She can live, but only if she removes the sticks, and by doing so his vital organs are skewered. Awesome stuff.
But at its heart, this is a revenge movie. Revenge of Jigsaw for the wrongs he'd suffered. In IV, we find out a heck of a lot more about John's life story, what made him who he is. In fact, we learn he has/had an ex-wife, who makes an extended experience here. Can the ex-wife jokes, you guys out there. She's actually a good guy in this one. I think. It's hard to tell, the plot's so convoluted. You did something wrong to Jigsaw? You die violently. Cut him off at the supermarket? Dinged his car in the parking lot? Littered on his part of the sidewalk? Man, you are so dead.
Meanwhile, all the cops and agents are trying desperately to find out where the actual Jigsaw headquarters is, because the killings continue - and one of their own is missing. Well, more than one, actually; one's been gone six months. But another just vanished, and for some reason the men in blue think he's the one behind everything. They may have a point, since as they follow his trail the bodies pile up. And, as I said, each victim has been selected for a specific reason. Man, if Jigsaw put as much effort into saving the world as he did in killing people off, we'd be pretty set.
This ain't for the squeamish, certainly. First scene is Jigsaw being cut open during an autopsy, and no sight is worse, perhaps, than seeing the skull sawed open, the skin flapped down, the brain removed... Eww. It's a big fat eww, and it's not the only one. If I were you, I wouldn't eat anything sticky or squishy while watching this - parts of it make Hostel seem like Herbie the Love Bug.
The biggest caveat is that the plot is a little tough to follow, since your mind is overwhelmed by all the carnage. At one point during the final ten minutes or so, a character appears whom I swear I didn't even recognize, and that's because some of the events of IV run parallel, timewise, to those in III. Saw III was so last year, so I didn't remember the character.
Overall, though, there is no substantial dropoff in quality from III to IV. Or even, really, from II to IV; the first one still reigns supreme, but that's partly because it was all fresh for us back then, and the others have had to live up to that film's standard. IV manages to hold its own; good thing, too, since it's very likely we'll see a V and a VI.
So Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and his faithful companion Amanda (Shawnee Smith) are no longer among the living, but their "work" lives on, in an unending conga line of sequels. In this one, two veteran FBI agents join the local cops to try to figure out who's killing cops, especially with the supposed mastermind quite sincerely deceased.
As with the first three movies, people are maimed and killed in variously creative ways, all part of some posthumous scheme cooked up by Jigsaw. Or by some accomplice who's carrying on the evil work. The good news? It's all interconnected with the events of Saw III. The bad news? Saw III was somewhat confusing, and this one blows it out of the water in terms of murkiness and who the hey is doing what and when. But we do see a lot of the same basic concepts, like a victim wakes to find himself in some sort of diabolical trap, and he must suffer incredible pain if he wants to live. I have to admit that the devices themselves - and the plots they forward - are pretty ingenious. In one scene, a husband and wife wake to find themselves impaled on a series of sharp sticks. That is, a stick enters the woman's body and exits, and then enters the man's body. The backstory is that she was physically abused by him for many years, and now she literally holds his life in her hands. She can live, but only if she removes the sticks, and by doing so his vital organs are skewered. Awesome stuff.
But at its heart, this is a revenge movie. Revenge of Jigsaw for the wrongs he'd suffered. In IV, we find out a heck of a lot more about John's life story, what made him who he is. In fact, we learn he has/had an ex-wife, who makes an extended experience here. Can the ex-wife jokes, you guys out there. She's actually a good guy in this one. I think. It's hard to tell, the plot's so convoluted. You did something wrong to Jigsaw? You die violently. Cut him off at the supermarket? Dinged his car in the parking lot? Littered on his part of the sidewalk? Man, you are so dead.
Meanwhile, all the cops and agents are trying desperately to find out where the actual Jigsaw headquarters is, because the killings continue - and one of their own is missing. Well, more than one, actually; one's been gone six months. But another just vanished, and for some reason the men in blue think he's the one behind everything. They may have a point, since as they follow his trail the bodies pile up. And, as I said, each victim has been selected for a specific reason. Man, if Jigsaw put as much effort into saving the world as he did in killing people off, we'd be pretty set.
This ain't for the squeamish, certainly. First scene is Jigsaw being cut open during an autopsy, and no sight is worse, perhaps, than seeing the skull sawed open, the skin flapped down, the brain removed... Eww. It's a big fat eww, and it's not the only one. If I were you, I wouldn't eat anything sticky or squishy while watching this - parts of it make Hostel seem like Herbie the Love Bug.
The biggest caveat is that the plot is a little tough to follow, since your mind is overwhelmed by all the carnage. At one point during the final ten minutes or so, a character appears whom I swear I didn't even recognize, and that's because some of the events of IV run parallel, timewise, to those in III. Saw III was so last year, so I didn't remember the character.
Overall, though, there is no substantial dropoff in quality from III to IV. Or even, really, from II to IV; the first one still reigns supreme, but that's partly because it was all fresh for us back then, and the others have had to live up to that film's standard. IV manages to hold its own; good thing, too, since it's very likely we'll see a V and a VI.