Jigsaw? Dead. Amanda? Dead. Kerry?
Dead. YIKES! The film makers do know another trilogy was planned
after this, right? Did they miss that memo?
After seeing Saw III in 2006, I
said they'd need a HELL of a strong sequel to make me come back.
Sure, I would have eventually seen the next movie regardless but it
sure wouldn't have been on opening night with my hard earned money in
hand. Right off the bat they announced the movie would center around
Lyriq Bent's underutilized character Daniel Rigg, so just like that I
was all in. And I'll admit to being intrigued about where the story
was going to go next, seeing as how the majority of the cast was
saddled with that whole “We are totally dead” business.
Director of the last two films Darren
Lynn Bousman said he was done with the series but upon reading the
script was convinced to come back one last time. He said the film's
huge plot twist surprised him, something he didn't think was possible
after two years of guiding the franchise. The script came from four
different scripts floating around Lionsgate, the original idea coming
from writer Thomas Fenton, who had mostly served in Hollywood as a
behind the scenes player.
The actual script was
written by the team of Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, who had
made a name for themselves with the horror comedy Feast. They
obviously impressed their bosses with their writing, as they would go
on to pen the rest of the movies in the series. Having some fairly
big shoes to fill after following the guys that transformed the genre
forever, let's see what kind of approach the new team brought with A
Ghoul Versus Saw IV!
We open with John “Jigsaw” Kramer's nude body lying on a mortician's table as a record is set for the series. Two minutes in and I'm already confused? How the hell did he get here? How did the authorities find his body, and in turn, his factory? What happened to Jeff? What was the final game he had to play? Did he rescue Corbett? Geez, I need to lie down already and the credits haven't even rolled yet! Bousman obviously felt he didn't go far enough with the last movie's impromptu brain surgery, so we get the extended and ultra graphic autopsy version. Lucky fucking us! You know Bousman, if you wanted to be in the medical field you should have just done that instead of subjecting us to your failed dreams.
The autopsy turns up a familiar looking
wax covered tape inside of Jigsaw's stomach, but here's my question:
how the fuck did he swallow that?!? The tape by itself is a stretch,
but with a bulky layer of wax around it? Not buying it movie! Our
favourite sneering police detective Mark Hoffman is called in to
listen to the tape, so let's see what was so important Jigsaw defied
the laws of human physiology to deliver.
“Are you there, Detective? If so,
you are probably the last man standing. Now perhaps you will succeed
where the others have failed. You think you will walk away untested?
I promise that my work will continue. You think it's over just
because I'm dead? It's not over. The games have just begun.”
Jesus, did Jigsaw ever sleep? How the
hell did he have this much time to run about thirty six different
games and tests all at once? This is made all the amazing is this
was done in the age before smart phones, so he must have had one HELL
of a scheduler written up to keep track of all this shit. We cut to
an old mausoleum where a man wakes up with a chain around his neck
and his eyes sewn shut, something I should have thought of doing
during that autopsy scene. On the other end of the chain is another
man, only his mouth is sewn shut. The middle of their chain is
attached to an ominous looking machine that looks like it's meant to
wind up the chain, to blandly named Mausoleum trap.
Art, the man lacking the use of his
mouth, sees the key to unlock the chain around his neck is attached
to the back of the blind man, Trevor. Trevor's relentless pulling on
his chain triggers the machine, which starts pulling both men towards
it. Aren't we forgetting something here? Some sort of, I don't
know, prerecorded set of instructions? Is this still Saw?
Using a small hammer he finds on the floor, Art gets the key and
kills Trevor, freeing himself before he's sucked into the machine.
He lets out a scream so powerful it breaks the stitches on his mouth
as the title card pops up. Um, okay?
We join another old friend, Sergeant
Daniel Rigg, as he and his SWAT team are sweeping through the
basement of an old building. From up above Detective Hoffman is
running the show, ordering a drone brought in when one of the
officers finds a device hanging from the ceiling. The robot's camera
enters a room and broadcasts footage of the late Detective Allison
Kerry, still hanging from Amanda's twisted harness.
Rigg starts running towards her despite
everyone yelling at him the room isn't secure yet. Kerry agonizes
over his dead friend, which Bousman classes the fuck up by showing a
rat crawling out of her exposed stomach. Nice, real nice. Hoffman
reprimands Rigg for violating protocol and going through an unsecured
door, something he should know way better not to ever do. Rigg and
Hoffman discuss the nature of their jobs and why they still do it,
interrupted by the arrival of two FBI agents, Lindsey Perez and Peter
Strahm.
Perez is played by Athena Karkanis, a
veteran of Bousman's films as she would also star in Repo! A
Genetic Opera and The
Barrens. Strahm is played by Scott Patterson, a person whose
entire life has been marked by ALMOST making the big time but never
quite hitting the mark. In the early 1980s he was an all-star minor
league baseball pitcher, but never made an active MLB team's roster.
Moving on to acting, he was the runner up to play Buffalo Bill in
Silence of the Lambs and Mr. Blonde in Reservoir Dogs.
But it's not all bad, he did get to play Elaine Benes' sponge-worthy
boyfriend on a classic episode of Seinfeld!
After four movies of a ruthless serial
killer directly responsible for twenty something murders, the FBI was
FINALLY called in to deal with him! The police often get the short
end of the stick in Hollywood movies, but in the Saw universe
they take incompetency to a whole other level. Oh wait, I guess the
FBI WASN'T contacted because Perez says Kerry was their liaison and
they're following up on her death. That makes sense because the FBI
certainly wouldn't be interested in that level of mass killing, would
they? The scene that follows is so baffling that I'm going to just
transcribe it because... well, you'll see.
Perez: The lock was open, she couldn't
get out.
Hoffman: It was constructed for her
execution. Betrayed the rules.Perez: Not a Jigsaw trap then?
Hoffman: No. Amanda Young, the accomplice-
Strahm: This wasn't done by Amanda Young.
Hoffman: Excuse me?
Strahm: Detective Kerry weighed approximately 130 pounds. Amanda Young's arrest report has her at 107. She couldn't get her up there alone.
Hoffman: John Kramer was-
Strahm: The bedridden cancer patient? He's brains, not brawn.
Hoffman: We was also an engineer. He could have rigged pulleys-
Strahm: OR someone else could have helped him.
Whoa, whoa, WHOA. SLOW DOWN MOVIE!
Actually, did I miss a movie between III and IV?
Obviously the police would have figured out Amanda was Jigsaw's
protege because they would have found her body next to his, but
shouldn't we have seen SOMETHING about this crucial incident, seeing
as how it's now driving the film's entire plot? This rickety story
is already dangerously close to falling apart, and we just hit the
fifteen minute mark.
Cut to Rigg, who is watching
interrogation footage of the blonde woman we saw in Jigsaw's surgery
dream in the last movie. Hoffman interrupts him, imploring him to go
home for the night. We learn six months have passed since Matthews'
disappearance and four days since Kerry's, Rigg become as obsessed
with finding Matthews as she was. We also learn Rigg is a lieutenant
now, despite being named as a sergeant when he first debuted. So
either he got a promotion or someone wasn't paying attention. Which
do you think it was? Rigg heads home to find his wife Tracy
in the middle of packing to leave for her mother's house, because no
character in the Saw universe is capable of balancing work and
a family life. She asks Rigg to come with her, but he replies that
he can't. She counters with he can but won't, as he can't get over
his crusade to save everyone. She kisses him goodbye and leaves.
Back at the police station, Perez gives
us some back story on Jigsaw in his pre-slaughtering people with zany
traps days. He was a civil engineer that owned a company called the
Urban Renewal Group, finally giving us an explanation on how he's
able to build such intricate devices. Doesn't really explain his
vast expertise in the medical field for all the body modifications he
does though... The woman in the interrogation tapes was Jill Tuck,
his ex-wife. Jill is played by Betsy Russell, an actress most famous
for appearing in a lot of awesome sounding 80s B-movies with titles
like Private School, Avenging Angel, and my personal favourite
Cheerleader Camp (a/k/a Bloody Pom Poms).
Hoffman, carrying a stuffed animal in
his arms, walks by and asks the agents if they need anything. A
detective mentions to Hoffman that “another doctor” has gone
missing from the hospital, Hoffman saying he'll check it out. Perez
asks about the toy, the detective telling her it's for a girl. I'm
sure these are both just random lines of dialogue to kill time and
won't be important later on. Pig Mask, who definitely isn't Amanda
at this point, kidnaps Rigg in his apartment. We then cut to Hoffman
writing a letter, placing it along with a key in an envelope and
leaving it in a desk. Before we get the chance to reflect how
awfully familiar that desk and envelope look, Pig Mask appears behind
Hoffman as the scene jumps to Rigg waking up in his own bathtub. He
leaves the bathroom to find Billy the Puppet on the TV waiting for
him.
“Hello, Officer Rigg. Welcome to
your rebirth. For years you've stood by and witnessed as you
colleagues have fallen. You have remained untouched while Eric
Matthews has disappeared. But with your survival came your
obsession- obsession to stop those around you from making the wrong
choices, thus preventing you from making the right ones. You wanted
to save everyone. Tonight I give you the opportunity to face your
obsession. Look closely. Eric Matthews is still alive. The block
of ice he stands upon is melting. He has but 90 minutes to save
himself. Detective Hoffman's fate is linked to Eric's survival.
Heed my warning Officer Rigg, their lives hang in the balance of your
obsession. Will you learn how to let go and truly save them? The
choice is yours.”.
This is accompanied with footage of a
bearded Matthews standing on a block of ice, a noose tied around his
next. Hoffman is next to him, bound and gagged in a chair. Getting
dressed and grabbing his gun, Rigg enters his hallway to find photos
of various people hanging from the ceiling. Advancing to the living
room he sees Pig Mask sitting in an overly mechanical chair, although
we quickly see it's a woman chained to the chair.
Billy comes to life and announces this
is the first test, that to save the woman Rigg has to NOT help her.
Montage footage establishes this woman was one of the pictures
hanging in the hallway, but is a street pimp instead of an innocent
victim. Is pimp the correct term for her? It's always so strongly
associated with men, so pimpette perhaps? Billy tells Rigg to just
walk away, but he won't listen and tries to free her. This activates
the machine, which begins to pull her hair into a series of gears
that slowly start ripping the top of her head off.
The film cuts away to the police
station, where a Detective Fisk gets the forensics report back from a
bullet casing recovered at Kerry's crime scene. A fingerprint on it
matches Rigg's, which of course is impossible until you notice the
officer who filed the report was Hoffman. Hmm... Rigg manages to
free pimpette, leaving the room to get something to help with her
injuries. Once he's out of the room we see her grab a hidden knife
and attack him. He throws her into a mirror in self defense, which
segues into an AWESOME transition shot back to the police station.
Saw has always had some really clever transition shots between
scenes, but this is probably my favourite one in the entire series.
Fisk updates Strahm and Perez about he
fingerprint, interrupted by an officer who tells him there's a report
of shots fired at the lieutenant's apartment. Rigg searches
pimpette's body and finds another tape player, this one a message
from Jigsaw instructing her to kill Rigg if he rescues her or face
prison for her prostitution crimes. Leaving the room, Rigg finds a
box with two keys and a note that one will save a life while the
other will take it away.
One of the keys is to room 261 of the
Alexander Motel, so Rigg makes that his destination. He leaves in
time to avoid the FBI agents and the police, Strahm finding the walls
of Rigg's apartment covered in photos of various players from the
series. Noticing several photos of Jill, Strahm announces he wants
to talk to her as he believes she's involved in all this. Strahm has
her brought to the police station for interrogation, where she is
quite standoffish towards the agents. We join Matthews and Hoffman in their
trap, as our old friend Art enters the room. He ignores the two
detectives, taking a seat behind a wall of monitors as we see there's
only fifty two minutes left. Rigg unlocks the door to room 261,
finding a large box on the bed with a picture of his wife on it. He
opens the box to find a Pig Mask and a tape player. We also see a
picture of a man on the inside of the box that was the desk clerk
when Rigg first entered the seedy motel.
“Hello, Officer Rigg. In order for
you to fully understand my way you must feel what I feel. The photo
before you is of a man in desperate need of help. In the next room
are the tools to his salvation. His life is in your hands, but in
the end he can only save himself. Be careful, there are cameras
watching and you must hide your identity. Make your choice.”.
Rigg, starting to go a bit unhinged,
brings the clerk into the room at gunpoint. Giving him the other
key, he makes him open the bedroom door that has “Feel what I feel”
painted on it. Through more photos hanging everywhere, we see the
clerk has been using this as his own personal rape chamber. The bed
has a device attached to it involving shackles and chains, Rigg
finding the next tape player on the nightstand.
“If you are playing this tape then
you are one step closer to truly understanding how to save a life.
As an officer of the law you find yourself torn, is the man before
you a victim or a perpetrator of violence? His salvation is out of
your hands. It is your choice, if you wish, to put it into his own.
Once this lesson is learned, you will find yourself one step closer
to truly saving Eric Matthews. Without you this man's game cannot
begin. Force him into position to face his demons and let him make
the decision.”.
Right on cue, a video begins playing on
the TV of the clerk attacking one of the women from the photos. Rigg
forces him to get into the trap, handing him a pair of switches
attached to cables also lying on the nightstand, which someone
activates a draw in the stand to pop open. Rigg grabs the items
inside and leaves, while Billy begins laying out the clerk's game. In case your curious, the trap involves
the clerk pressing both of the triggers to cause scythes propped on
either side of the bed to gouge his eyes out for being a voyeur, even
though he was MUCH worse than that so they should have been placed to
castrate him. I am totally bored at this point, it's worth noting.
The clerk fails, the trap tearing his arms and legs off as if ANYONE
cares about the fate of a serial rapist.
Looking at the note, it tells Rigg to
“Become the teacher and save a life. Go back to where it all
began”. This triggers a flashback of when Rigg was still a
uniformed officer dealing with a little girl being abused by her
father. The girl, too scared of her monster of a parent, refuses to
admit what he's doing to her. Pissed off, Rigg starts beating him up
until Hoffman stops him. To its credit, the film realizes it's being
boring as fuck and returns to Strahm and Jill for what is EASILY one
of the best scenes of the franchise.
Strahm is grilling Jill over her
connections to her ex-husband when she mentions “Gideon meant
everything to John”. Strahm asks who that is, and she replies is
he knows anything about the Chinese zodiac. Strahm throws his arms
up and yells out “AW JILL, NO NO!” in what PERFECTLY sums up how
everyone was feeling at this point. I seriously rewound this three
times because Strahm's reaction is just priceless.
Jill launches into a flashback of her
happy married life with John, which probably would have been nice to
have while he was still alive, but what do I know about continuity of
a character? We see she ran a clinic for recovering drug addicts and
was quite pregnant with their son Gideon. One night as John waited
outside for her in his car, Jill was closing up the clinic when he
got accosted by an addict named Cecil. He ended up opening a door
right onto her pregnant stomach, running away in the night as John
spotted him. John took her to the hospital but it was already too
late, Gideon was lost and thus Jigsaw was born.
Strahm gets called away to the motel
crime scene, learning the room has been rented by a lawyer named Art
Blank. They head to Blank's last known address, an abandoned
factory. How many of those are there in this damn city? Does Saw
take place in Detroit?! But there are two folders waiting in the
factory, one saying “Open the door and you'll find me” while the
other says “You are in danger of getting too close... step back”.
Strahm notices a camera mounted in the corner, tearing it off the
wall and causing one of Art's monitors to go to static.
Matthews tries to kill himself by
jumping off the block of ice but the chain isn't long enough. Art
stops him, telling him that if he goes all the way off the ice it'll
activate a pressure plate that'll electrocute Hoffman to death.
Hoffman and Art lock eyes, triggering ANOTHER flashback of the
aftermath of Rigg beating the asshole father where Art is shown to be
the man's lawyer. The father tried to press charges against Rigg but
Hoffman swept the whole thing under the rug, Art warning them this
would all come back to haunt them someday.
Speaking of Rigg, he's now in the
school which is also the same one we saw earlier. Arrows lead him to
a room where the asshole and his wife are tied to a pole back to
back. Metal spikes are poking out from their bodies, the wife
revealing she's still alive in Cheap Jump Scare #317. Their test is
already finished as Morgan, the wife, had to pull the spikes out of
her body which in turn damaged the asshole's organs and killed him.
Pretty ingenious, really, and one of the more creative traps in the
film. There's still one spike left in Morgan, but before Rigg can
help her remove there's still the matter of the next message.
“Hello, Officer Rigg. What have you
learned thus far? Experience is a harsh teacher. First comes the
test, second comes the lesson. If you are to save as I save then you
will see that the person before you is but a student. So I ask you,
Officer Rigg, has the pupil learned her lesson? Has she been taught
the error of her ways? Does she now view the world differently?
Officer Rigg, they key to this person's freedom lies in the palm of
your hand. But only after she has done her own part can you play
your role in her salvation. Once judgment has been made, though, the
key to finding your next destination is just off the map.”.
Click here for Part 2!
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