Saw IV (R, 2007)

Jigsaw(Tobin Bell)'s bloodfest continues from beyond the grave in SAW IV. (The killer's life actually ended as the fourth film begins.) This time around, the primary sufferer SWAT team leader Rigg (Lyriq Bent), last seen supporting Kerry (Dina Meyer). She also shows up dead, spurring Riggs to try to save his other, long-missing partner, Eric (Donnie Wahlberg), back one more time to endure unspeakable torment. Rigg's intense desire to help is exactly what he must unlearn, according to Jigsaw, who leaves behind complex instructions that will lead either to Rigg's reinvigorated appreciation of his neglected wife (Ingrid Hart) or his own end. Rigg's "education" involves one grisly torture scene after another, witnessed both by him and the FBI agents -- Strahm (Scott Patterson) and Perez (Athena Karkanis) -- who declare the Jigsaw case theirs. While Strahm brings all kinds of file knowledge and Perez is intuitive (like girl cops tend to be in the movies), they're both surprised to learn Jigsaw's history from his ex-wife, Jill (Betsy Russell), who spends her interrogation room time looking alternately aghast and bored. The agents press her predictably, she gives up the big secret and then ... nothing much. The murder and mayhem proceed as Jigsaw has ordained, with all his victims behaving in selfish, fearful, pathetic ways. Except for Rigg, who tries again and again to do the right thing (in his mind) but never meets Jigsaw's standards. And so he suffers, with the rest of us.

SAW IV doesn't bring much originality to the bloody scrap table of the series' previous three installments. As fans no doubt recall from Saw III, his imminent death from cancer impelled him to torture a surgeon into providing him bloody closure. And although she's also dead -- like too many other players to mention -- she makes a brief appearance in this installment, because for some reason all plotty points lead to Jigsaw's death. Again.

Even if you consider the ex-wife's backstory about Jigsaw/John as additional information, it's certainly not news. Like many villains before him, John turns out to have been wronged rather randomly, an act of terrible violence that he absorbs into his worldview as a design he'll spend the rest of his life correcting -- or, perhaps more accurately, elaborating. Viewers might want to wash their hands of the entire Saw business and instead seek out other, more bearable cat-and-mousey thrillers.

Studio: Lionsgate
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Cast: Costas Mandylor, Scott Patterson, Tobin Bell
Genre: Horror
Run time: 108 minutes
Theatrical release: October 26, 2007
DVD release: January 22, 2008
MPAA Rating: R
MPAA explanation: sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture throughout, and for language.