So far, I’m on the record as liking the original Saw and very much disliking the sequel. Let me now allow you to know that I also had no love for Saw III: “I didn’t like Saw III“. Good. Now we can jump right into my feelings for part IV.

When I was a kid, I loved sequels. It was such a cozy feeling to know you were going to get “more of the same only bigger”. I guess that’s why I don’t know of any small children that write reliable reviews (including my immature-self). It’s just too easy to let familiarity wash over you. (I’m not saying I WOULDN’T accept what a small child had to say about… say… Little Man. I’m just saying I might take it with a grain of salt.)

As an adult, I can argue the merits of every shitty Friday the 13th flick and give reasons why it’s better than some of the other shitty entries. But, if those movies had come out while I was grown, I probably would have gotten frustrated with them, just as I have with most “franchises” (fuck, I hate that word).

Any sequel worth seeing takes the best (read: most marketable) aspects of its predecessors and focuses on those things while adding new shit. So… What did I like about the original SAW?

1) The situation was fucked. A great idea to start a story from. A “Holy shit!” scenario.

2) Not necessarily the traps, but the choices the characters had to choose from.

3) The characters and their lives, while not feeling truly “real”, were interesting.

4) The ending, while convoluted, was possible enough to seem acceptable.

As to whether the rest of America liked those same things, I have no fucking clue.

I DO know that the producers of the series are cranking out one per year and probably don’t have time to think about what makes a good movie because they have to get that next fucking movie made and what is the poster gonna look like dammit it’s almost Halloween you fuckers get to work!

Saw IV is about some cops that knew that New Kid On The Block-Guy that was in II or III. The black guy is obsessed and hopeful that NKOTBG is still alive. The white guy thinks the black guy is too obsessed and should take a step back. Jigsaw communicates with the black guy and makes him do all this crazy shit to learn his lesson. Notice anything odd about that summary? We'll get there (see #3, below).

The movie doesn’t really have a plot, per se, it’s merely an excuse to get to the new contraptions and the big reveal.

And I had no problem with that. Sure, the movie fucked up every point that made the first one so enjoyable, but they were mostly forgivable.

1) The situation(s) was(were?) stupid and relied on stupidity to happen.

2) There were traps on people we didn’t even know or care about.

3) Who was what, again? Yeah. The characters were so bland and interchangeable that my date and I kept mistaking two characters for the same goddamn guy. That's why my synopsis is so lacking in serious details.

Now, what about #4? Hold on, little buckaroo, we'll be arriving there, soon enough.

So, we upped the trapping factor, and get something tolerable because of good camera work and interesting deaths. Good job. Had a great time, gotta go ho… What’s this? A huge, long, forced, drawn-out, over-emphasized twist ending that just means you’ll have to go to greater lengths to outdo yourselves next time?

Well, that just made this movie “deep”, didn’t it? I mean, what with all the flashbacks and all that…

I can’t exactly explain how much this ending sucks. When you spend 10 minutes trying to tie a character into a plot that never gave any clues that he would be important, you’ve kind of lost the whole point of having a twist in the first place. It ruined the rest of the movie for me. I felt like a kitten being explained to not poop on the carpet because it makes a mess and makes my owner upset.

Look, I'm not stupid. But there, seriously, were no clues to even HINT that a certain character wasn't who he seemed.

So, here's yet another 'Fuck you, movie' from Nix.