The problem is quite simple to explain actually, Saw is just like Star Wars. Remember back when the original Star Wars came out? It was a single movie, and there was the Force.. a magical, mystical thing that surrounded all creation that some people could tap into to let them pull off amazing stuff. Well, it made money, so the trilogy was formed. Still, the Force was a magical, mystical thing. Problem is that they started with Episide IV, and when it came time to tell the back story Lucas struggled to make the new/old stuff mesh with the old/new stuff. The end result was a mess.. and the Force became nothing more than science.

Saw was a low budget hit that was never intended to have a sequel, but it made so much money the studio had to have more. Saw II used the same formula but had a budget, and was a great movie.. but they didn’t know if it would be enough to continue the series. It made tons of money and they had to keep going, so to explain what was happening they started telling a bit of back story using flashbacks, and it sucked. Saw IV has that same problem, turned up to 11. Jigsaw is dead, no doubt at all about that, so they’re telling this story through the liberal use of flashbacks to let us know exactly why Jigsaw became who he was, and how others were recruited into his cause. The real problem here is their doing it by expanding on some scenes from earlier movies, to let us know what was “really” happening. But it doesn’t ring true. By trying to pull more out of the early movies than was actually there it just comes off as desperate, and is quite hard to follow at times. I’m 90% sure I got it all at the end, but it took lots of concentration and thought to figure it out, and that’s annoying in a horror movie. And, I could still be wrong.

Is it full of blood? Yep. How bout the traps, are they gruesome? Yep, of course, this is Saw after all. I did like some of the traps this time around. The wheelchair was nifty, and the classic “guy on an ice cube” had a nice twist to it. But the story was confusing, disjointed and annoying. I’m sure they’ll make Saw V since this one made so much money, I can only hope the new Jigsaw (and yes, stick around to the end and you’ll find out who it is) will go back to the formula from the first two movies and breathe some new/old life back into this series.