Well apparently God hates me now and demands another blog to satisfy his unending desire for sacrificial things. So I present to you, my fellow Dtoids, and to God, my movie review blog and a little Wal-mart fun.

My friends and I drove up to the closest theatre, which was 30 minutes away to see this movie, Upon our arrival we discovered to our dismay, that the first showing was already sold out. So after a little discussion we all bought tickets for the 9:50 show. this means we had amost 3 hours to kill. How did we do it? By going to a mexican restaurant, drinking some pitchers of margarita's and then going to Wal-mart for some late night shenanigans. Here are those pics from Wal-mart.










I saw Cowzilla's blog and was reminded that I had meant to do this. So here's my review of Saw IV

*WARNING, SAW I - III SPOILERS AHEAD(IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE PREVIOUS SAW MOVIES DON'T READ)***

I am assuming that by now most everyone has seen the previous Saw movies so I am going to talk about them like you have. If you haven't read on at your own peril.

Saw IV follows the story of Swat Commander Rigg(Lyriq Bent) and his obsession with finding Detective Eric Matthews(Donnie Wahlberg) who disappeared in Saw II and has been gone for six months. Helping him in this endeavor is Detective Hoffman(Costas Mandylor) but he soon becomes a victim of Jigsaw's plan as well. Along for the ride are two FBI agents, Agent Strahm(Scott Patterson or Luke from Gilmore Girls) and Agent Perez(Athena Karkanis) who show up to take over the Jigsaw investigation. The point in the movie where the plot gets going is the discovery of Detective Kerry's body, which if you remember, had the rib cage torn out of her in Saw III by Amanda Young, Jigsaw's apprentice. Commander Rigg is abducted and forced into his own game where he has 90 minutes to overcome a series of demented traps and save an old friend. From there we follow a very detailed look into John Kramer/Jigsaw's life and how he became the murdering, psychopathic killer/moral teacher that we all know, love, and have come to see his genius. Without revealing more of the story I'll stop there and talk about something else, but let it be known that the twists in the end were not nearly as clever as the previous three movies have been and once the final one is revealed, you will be disappointed by it.

First of all I loved Saw I and it would be my favorite if it wasn't for the worst acting I have seen in a movie in a long time. Danny Glover and Carey Ewels(sp?) were absolutely atrocious in it, but what do you expect from basically a B movie. Still it was great, the plot twists were great and it was an awesome concept. The acting by Tobin Bell in this chapter of the story of Jigsaw is great. He really turned it up a notch as his character was finally getting a chance to show more than just a cold blooded killer lying on a death bed or sitting in a chair. More than anything his voice just gets to you.

Scott Patterson did a good job as a brilliant FBI Agent and came off of it convincingly, Costas Mandylor, a relative unknown, also did a fine job trying to show that he was a good guy while everyone could tell that there was something more to this man.

Music was what you expect, but I was actually let down by the 'traps' of Saw IV. There was really only one scene that even looked realistic, the others just didn't strike me as brutal as the ones from Saw III, which had the best traps IMHO.

Over all I was let down by Saw IV. Saw III just seemed so well put together with the plot twists and the traps came together to make it a good thriller. Saw II had some of the best plot twists of the series and unfortunately, Saw IV used some of the concepts of Saw II to help it's plot stay together, sort of. It felt like a half-ass effort on the part of the writers, which I'm sorry to say, are no longer the original writers/creators of the Saw series. Which might have something to do with the feeling that the movie is just turning into a Halloween type of series.

Overall I give it a 7 out of 10. I still enjoyed the majority of the movie and the backstory of Jigsaw was good, but I'm ready to get back to what made Saw I so good, random people thrown together into life and death games and throughout the movie it is revealed why they are there and what connections they have. Hopefully Saw V will, but I doubt it, it's set up to tell the story of the third member of the Jigsaw team. Shit, and I was hoping for more foot cutting scenes.

Running Time: Around 2 hours
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Writers: Patrick Metlon and Marcus Dunstan

Official Trailers:





Funny parody: