Saw IV (Blu-Ray)
"You feel you now have control, don't you? You think you will walk away untested. I promise that my work will continue. That I have ensured. By hearing this tape, some will assume that this is over, but I am still among you. You think it's over just because I am dead. It's not over. The games have just begun."
Overview & Plot:
Saw IV is quite obviously the fourth installment in the long running horror series. For those that haven't bothered to watch these morbid examples of how a train wreck can in fact be caught on tape and marketed haven't missed much. In the last installment we were treated to the death of Jigsaw along with his protégé Amy. Director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw III, Saw II) picks up where he left off. Jigsaw is now on a table in the morgue being prepped for an autopsy (which is unnecessarily graphic, even if it is a shallow attempt at showing realism). After removing and weighing the brain he works his way down to the abdomen and starts with the stomach. Upon removing the organ and opening it up to review dietary contents he finds a tape coated in wax. Detective Hoffman is called down and the resulting quote a paragraph above is the gist of the tape. Writers Patrick Melton (Feast) and Marcus Dunstan (Feast) take us down the road of convoluted plot lines jumping back and forth between flash backs of both Jigsaw's life as well as Detective Hoffman, Officer Riggs, and a myriad of ancillary characters. Once again the film makes an attempt to show how horrible the majority of those who walk among us are and give them their chance at redemption. Moral consequence. For a movie showing the graphic death of more then a handful of people it sure fails at it's attempts to be high and mighty.
The only half way redeeming factor to this 95 minute waste is they bring back Donnie Wahlberg (everyone’s favorite guilty pleasure) for one final performance. The rest of the cast is made up of veritable nobodies or TV actors, with the exception of Tobin Bell (Jigsaw) and Donnie Wahlberg (Eric Mathews). The acting is generally sub par at best as is the writing. While they do manage to bring back a fairly decent amount of clever (albeit morbid) "tests" for our cast to suffer through they never put much emphasis on them as they had in earlier films. Instead you spend a large amount of time watch Jigsaw change from an understanding and intelligent individual to a cold, calculating murderer with a God complex. I won't bother exposing more plot to you because after watching it twice I'm still confused by some areas and I honestly don't feel it warrants a third attempt. They had a good shot at actually making a decent film, but they botched it along the way. Badly.
Presentation:
The version I picked up was once again Blu-Ray, and my normal viewing specs remained the same. Did the film look good? Sure. Did it look 1080p good? Not a chance. While it managed to retain the wonderful sharpness and contrast a lot of what makes a good HD film was lost with all the washed out, bland, and underwhelming color schemes. The audio was passable, clear, and never distorted although as far as a musical score goes it seems almost nonexistent. Once again, very underwhelming.
The film does have a large amount of bonus features but unless you're the most die hard Saw fan little to none of these will be interesting nor entertaining. I paid only $22.95 for this film (and bare in mind it is a Blu-Ray which makes it rather cheap, especially for a new release) and I still feel shafted.
Conclusion:
To quote Donnie Wahlberg's character Eric Mathews during a scene in this film, "I don’t want to play anymore." My thoughts couldn't have been worded any clearer.
My Score: 3.25/10