Saw IV

“You think it’s over because I’m dead,” teases raspy-voiced Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) from beyond the grave – courtesy of a tape dug out of his autopsied stomach. So the cruel machinations begin again, as director Darren Lynn Bousman tries to spark life into a disembowelled corpse. Parallel plot-strands threaten to strangle one another as obsessed SWAT team member Rigg (Lyriq Bent) and FBI profilers Strahm (Scott Patterson) and Perez (Athena Karkanis) charge about town or interrogate Jigsaw’s estranged wife Jill (Betsy Russell), looking for clues that will save two captive cops from an early bath. The $64,000 question is, can the cops learn to see how Jigsaw sees and feel how he feels? The need to incorporate familiar characters and icons from the earlier films, together with flashbacks that flesh out Jigsaw’s pre-‘puppet master’ past, simply leads to an irritating series of creative dead ends. Truly, a hack-‘Saw’.