Saw IV
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Writer: Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan, Thomas Fenton
Sequel to: Saw, Saw II, Saw III
Cast: Tobin Bell, Costas Mandylor, Scott Patterson, Betsy Russell, Lyriq Bent, Athena Karkanis, Louis Ferreira, Simon Reynolds, Shawnee Smith, Angus Macfadyen, Bahar Soomekh, Donnie Wahlberg, Dina Meyer
Seen on: 24./25.9.2025

Plot:
Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and Amanda (Shawnee Smith) are dead and Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is left with a tape informing him that he, now, will be tested. As Hoffman tries to piece everything together, he is joined by FBI agents Strahm (Scott Patterson) and Perez (Athena Karkanis) who have taken up their own investigations. But time isn’t on their side, especially when Riggs (Lyriq Bent) is abducted.

Saw IV feels like the series has a bit of a low, and since the first films of the series weren’t particularly high to begin with, that is not good at all. Let’s hope that it recovers a little from here.

Saw IV plays with narrative time a little (something that the series has done every once in a while, but never as nicely as here), but honestly I just don’t give a fuck about Jigsaw’s successor, can we please move on from that question? I also don’t need a tragic backstory for him, or even more tragic than what we already had, especially not when it comes with a „drug addicts are super dangerous“ twist. Yawn.

There is something to be said for the films being obviously made by the same people who planned for it (I assume). The films feel like they are made from the same (greenish) cloth, a surprisingly rare quality in many series. Even if the cloth it is made from isn’t the greatest and makes creative choices I don’t particularly like, I did enjoy that part.

I also enjoyed seeing Scott Patterson, who absolutely triggered a „LUKE!“ reflex on my part. It must be rather annoying as an actor to be tied up with a character you played, but for me as the audience, it is just really nice, like seeing a personal friend in a movie. I don’t know if it was the Luke aura, but I actually cared for Strahm, which was a nice change for the series that is filled with characters I just don’t care about.

But yeah, generally speaking, this is not great cinema, and while I do hope that there will be an upwards trend again in the series, I doubt by now that it will ever be any good.

Summarizing: what did I get myself into with this Saw marathon?