Load of rubbish!!

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

The coroner is performing an autopsy on the body of John Kramer. A tape is found in his stomach and police detective Hoffman is called in. Elsewhere, a man with his eyes sewn shut is chained to a man (Louis Ferreira) with his mouth sewn shut attached to a machine. Hoffman and Lieutenant Rigg lead the SWAT team to find detective Kerry's dead body. Later, Rigg is attacked at home and wakes up to find himself in one of Jigsaw's games.The franchise do two things excessively to the point of distraction. The first is the jumping around with time, places, and protagonists. It's an annoying aspect of the franchise that they like to make a jigsaw puzzle out of the plot. The other is the flashy jump edits during the gruesome reveals. It's both cheesy and limits the actual shock. It's more horrifying to slowly linger on the bloody torture. We should leisurely enjoy the grotesque reveals. Despite all that, I really do love the idea of a dead Jigsaw while his games continue and the first torture is really sweet. The first half is great with that female victim but the movie slowly drifts away from me until I stopped caring somewhere in the second half.

Moving the franchise into a trilogy, the third brutal torture horror film explains a bit more how Jigsaw pulls off the sick games while showing even more gore. The film begins with Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) breaking his leg in an attempt to escape captivity. Detective Kerry (Dina Meyer) searches for Eric but she also falls victim to Jigsaw's awful torture. The main story consists of John Kramer (Tobin Bell) and his pupil Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) kidnapping a surgeon Lynn Denlon (Bahar Soomekh) in order to keep John alive. Jigsaw wants to oversee one last game before he finally passes away so attaches a deadly necklace to Lynn's neck that has shotgun cartridges all around it and will go off if John's heart rate stops.The test revolves around Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) who must go through a series of awful tortures. He lost his son in a drunk driving accident and has never recovered. His first test is to help the woman who witnessed his son's death, Danica (Debra McCabe), from freezing to death. She is hung up naked in a frozen locker and has water sprayed on her periodically unless Jeff grabs a key. He burns his cheek grabbing the key but doesn't save her in time. The next round is the judge who let the killer go, Judge Halden (Barry Flatman). The Judge will be drowned in rotten pig guts if Jeff doesn't burn his son's possessions to get the key. Check out more of this review and others at swilliky.com

"Saw IV" concentrates on two story lines: what truly motivated Jigsaw (played by Tobin Bell) into putting people into traps; and a cop (played by Lyriq Bent) being tested by Bell to see how far Bent's obsession will go regarding Bent's need to save everyone. While the former is interesting and well played, the latter was forced, with Bent doing many things that were out of character despite the screenwriters trying to justify it with Bent's emotional problems.More bloody, heinous traps; more gruesome deaths of victims; more plot twists; more revelations; more mini cassettes with Bell's altered voice; more frenetic editing and transitions that move the story along rapidly…all leading to more reasons for fans of this series to squirm and laugh and gasp and enjoy the morbid nature of these stories.My most memorable, movie moment of "Saw IV" is the very detailed, disgusting, and fascinating autopsy scene. Unless you have a very strong stomach, this is not the time to be eating your hot dogs or chips and salsa.Four movies in, and the "Saw" movies still have lots of steam. How far can it go before going stale? I shall find out soon because I'll be checking out part V.Mannysmemorablemoviemoments

Saw IV is all about torturing and killing people in the most sadistic way possible. That's all it is. Just loads of gore. Jigsaw may be dead, but his legacy continues. Jigsaw continues to appear in a lot of flashbacks which completely slow the film down, yet they are the best part of it thanks to Tobin Bell's magnetic screen presence. Meanwhile, yet another unfortunate person is being put through a brutal test so that he can overcome his flaws and appreciate life. What is his crime? Being a bit impatient and being obsessed with saving his friend. That's it?! That is no justification to put someone through the wringer like this at all. That sums up the slippery logic of S4. Nothing really makes sense, it's just disturbing instead of scary and this is entirely lacking in the twists and interesting themes which made the original a hit. There is still a twist ending, but by the time you've finally reached the end of a deeply tedious series of bland traps which drowns both its unfortunate (And likable) protagonist and it's possibly even more unfortunate audience in endless mountains of fake blood, it's difficult to truly care. This starts off with a pointless, gruesome and not even very well-made scene showing Jigsaw's autopsy. That opening sums up the entire movie. If this is Jigsaw's legacy, than I feel very sorry for him.4/10