Saw IV

Saw IV is exactly what SawIII should have been (if, indeed it "should" have been anything, perhaps the whole Saw Franchise shouldn't be a franchise at all, hmm?), it was better than Saw II by a long ways and I'm pretending for the moment that I live in a happy, joyful world where Saw III did not exist in it's current form and was instead, this film.

It was an excellent conclusion to the "story" of Jigsaw and managed to wrap up things nicely, including some things you thought were already wrapped up! The horror!

It delves into Jigsaw's past and why he does what he does very well, without over-doing it and it does a very good job of making sure that at the same time as preaching about why he did what he did, we're still kept very much in the present and engrossed in the current situation.
Otherwise this could have edged on being a prequel which would be aimless and unnecessary.

There are a few too many "fancy"cuts from one scene to the next. It's like the director just learned some fancy camera shifting techniques and really went to school trying them out on this movie, but thankfully it doesn't ruin the film to any major degree.

The best thing about this Saw, as opposed to Saw III and Saw II is that, although it does have a twist at the end, it does not try too hard to have a huge "Oh My Fucking GOD" twist ending, like II and III had. Both those films endings made me want to grab the Director by the throat and castrate him slowly. Better yet, I'd force him to castrate himself, in order to survive some sort of complicated mechanical trapping device that's attached to his balls and will slice his head off when the timer reaches zero if he can't manage to cut his own balls off in time. That's teach the bastard.
I still want to do that to the director even though he somewhat redeemed himself with Saw IV.
It would just be fitting, no?
This film instead had a little "Oh! Well fancy that!" twist much like the original Saw. Which does make you rethink the whole film but does not feel a need to spend 10 minutes explaining the twist to you in case you didn't get it the first time, thank you Saw III!!!!

So anyway, let's all just forget Saw III ever happened and call this movie Saw III shall we?
In fact while we're at it let's drop off Saw II as well, because it was pretty lame itself.
While we're at it, let's face the facts and admit to ourselves that no matter how much better Saw IV was to the previous two movies, it is paler than pale in comparison to the original Saw, which was frankly a work of genius and would have remained that way if some arsehole hadn't come along with the ol' sequel-agenda.

I'm beginning to think that the only reason I actually enjoyed Saw IV to any degree was because it was watched on the same day I learned of Michael Bay's insidious lust to make a Nightmare On Elm Street remake, thus making Saw IV the highlight of the day by comparison!

Seriously, think about Michael Bay destroying yet another classic movie, then go watch some tripe of a film and let me know if you end up enjoying it, purely because of the comparative brilliance.

Nonetheless, I enjoyed the film reasonably and for the reasons I listed so I shall still give Saw IV...