Saw IV (2007)
Movie rating: 3/10
Some movies I have more to say about than others. Saw IV is one of those movies I have less to say about. This must be why Roger Ebert stopped reviewing Friday the 13th movies after the first few entries. After a while, these cookie-cutter horror sequels start to blend together. These are movies that keep getting made primarily because they’re so cheap they tend to generate large profit margins regardless. When it comes to Saw I’m pretty sure I’ve seen the first three. I watched Saw II in theatres on a first date (her idea), caught the original Saw at some point, and have hazy memories of antagonist John Kramer, aka “Jigsaw” (Tobin Bell), dying at the end of one, which means I must have seen the third.
The most striking thing about Saw IV is how little impact the death of the series’ main character has. It opens with the gruesome autopsy of Jigsaw, but throughout the movie he’s set up elaborate torture traps for more people like nothing happened. Granted, it’s a nice hook when the autopsy doctor slices open Jigsaw’s stomach only to find a wax-coated microcassette. A little thing like dying can’t keep Jigsaw down! It appears Jigsaw left behind recordings and clues to lead investigators to his “final game”. Given the half-dozen sequels that followed, you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical this will be the last.
Most of the movie involves investigators following clues and learning more about Jigsaw’s back story. We learn how his ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell) miscarried after drug addict Cecil (Billy Otis) robbed the clinic she was working at. When we see Jigsaw watch Cecil run out of the clinic, then discover the tragic loss of his unborn son, you know there’s going to be some retribution. One of the recurring aspects of horror movies is how mass-murdering villains are portrayed almost as tongue-in-cheek antiheroes, since characters who die are often presented as “deserving” it in some way: premarital sex, drug and alcohol use, being dumb and/or annoying, or committing legitimately awful crimes. Hence the trope of the “final girl” in slasher films, who does not engage in such transgressions and is the only one to survive.
Sad to say, the way that Jigsaw takes revenge on Cecil is one of just two interesting torture traps in the whole film. The entire idea of Saw was that people who have committed some “wrong” are put in life-threatening traps to test their will to survive, and the traps usually bear some thematic resemblance to their misdeeds. That’s the case with Cecil, who can survive only if he disfigures himself to supposedly become as ugly on the outside as he is on the inside. It also applies to the trap set for Ivan (Marty Adams), a motel manager and serial rapist. But Ivan’s ordeal finishes so quickly there’s barely any time to generate tension.
None of the characters in Saw IV besides Jigsaw are interesting, save perhaps for Jill. The glimpses of past life with John Kramer are better than the Star Wars prequels in showing someone’s descent into evil, which is a low bar. Everyone else is completely one-dimensional. Officer Rigg (Lyriq Bent) follows Jigsaw’s clues and seems to disappear for a while in the second half. FBI agents Strahm (Scott Patterson) and Perez (Athena Karkanis) are as generic as it gets. No wonder that despite his often subdued performance as Jigsaw, Tobin Bell really is the heart of these films.
When he has Cecil trapped, Jigsaw opens up about his twisted philosophy and offers up the film’s best dialogue:
Jigsaw: I forgive you, Cecil. I do. But addiction has ruined your life.
Cecil: I'm bleeding, man. Please just let me go.
Jigsaw: I could let you go, but that wouldn't serve you. I'll tell you what I will do, though. I will give you a tool to reclaim your life, and to discard the vices that have corrupted your soul.
Cecil: I don't have a fucking soul.
Jigsaw: Maybe you will in the next life. You see things aren't sequential. Good doesn't lead to good, nor bad to bad. People steal, don't get caught, live the good life. Others lie, cheat, and get elected. Some people stop to help a stranded motorist and get taken out by a speeding semi. There's no accounting for it. How you play the cards you're dealt, that's all that matters.
The world Jigsaw describes is unjust and unfair, yet his description is accurate. A key element of his worldview is that people must help themselves. Indeed, the lesson Rigg is meant to learn is that while he is obsessed with saving others, those he is hoping to reach must be responsible for their own fate. “Their salvation was out of your hands,” Jigsaw says. In his own way, Jigsaw expresses the dominant capitalist ideology of “individualism” and “self-reliance”. Of course, just as none of those characters would have been in a position to “save themselves” without Jigsaw’s “help”, in reality human beings have always required a strong sense of cooperation to thrive and build complex societies. Either way, the characters are too flat and poorly drawn to do as much with this theme, even to the extent previous entries did.
The biggest flaw in Saw IV is how dumb it is. Even when Jigsaw was alive, his ability to foresee everything strained credulity. Here it’s still more ridiculous because the man is dead, yet has nevertheless managed to lay a trail of clues and recordings predicting everything our main characters will do. How long did Jigsaw spend making these recordings, writing these notes, and building these traps? At a certain point the character’s ability to predict everything others do verges on omnipotence. Meanwhile, his traps are so elaborate, it’s difficult to see how they could have been built so quickly.
Spoilers follow.
The film tries to get around this by giving Jigsaw “apprentices” who help him and continue his work after his death. At the end of Saw IV, it turns out Rigg’s superior Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who spent much of the film being threatened with electrocution, was never in any danger and is actually Jigsaw’s other apprentice. Director Darren Lynn Bousman and writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan play this off as a big twist and reveal. There’s just one thing missing: motivation. Why is Hoffman Jigsaw’s apprentice? What does he have to gain? Maybe I missed something. But it wasn’t at all clear why this detective would help out a serial killer, go through the trouble of pretending to be his captive, and so on.
The movie is sloppy like that. We see Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg), who I remember from Saw II, and Jeff (Angus Macfadyen), who I don’t remember from Saw III. Diehard fans might appreciate that, but it took me out of the movie to have Jeff suddenly appear at the end only to be shot and killed, when I had no clue who this character was.
I’m surprised the Saw series continued after this underwhelming fourth entry. But then, I watched this instalment and will probably end up seeing the others, so I’m part of the problem. Jigsaw would say the only person who can save me from watching more bad movies is me. Might take a while for that lesson to sink in.