Since the thing is increasingly impatient to jump forward to the next big torture set piece, there isn't any time to establish anyone's character. Butcher shops are bloody, too, but they're not scary.
The trouble is that if you haven't seen the other entries in the cycle, or don't have all the characters committed to memory, you'll have trouble figuring out who anybody is or, in the end, what any of it is supposed to mean.
Even by the standards of the recent "Saws," which have enjoyed considerably larger budgets than the first pic, the new edition is more frenetically cut (by editors Kevin Greutert and Brett Sullivan), more dimly lit (by lenser David A. Armstrong), sweatier in terms of perfs by the grimly serious cast, more madly packed with micro-incidents and action, and more brazen in requiring suspension of disbelief.
If an hour and a half of so-called "torture porn" sounds like fun, you'll find Saw IV situated somewhere between the first in the cycle (a solid original with plenty of energy in it) and the last (a gasping copycat willing to do anything to stay alive).
It's a depressing experience to view something like Saw IV. It's not just the soullessness that's dispiriting, but the lack of invention. When a movie does little more than repeat what its predecessors accomplished with grotesque effectiveness, it's past time to tip this corpse into its grave and bury it.
It's a depressing experience to view something like Saw IV. It's not just the soullessness that's dispiriting, but the lack of invention. When a movie does little more than repeat what its predecessors accomplished with grotesque effectiveness, it's past time to tip this corpse into its grave and bury it.
He now imparts so many life lessons via his Rube Goldberg thresher devices that he's starting to turn into the Rod Serling of severed body parts. Now that's torture.
He now imparts so many life lessons via his Rube Goldberg thresher devices that he's starting to turn into the Rod Serling of severed body parts. Now that's torture.
