It's Halloween so it must be Saw. So the tag line reads. Where do I stand on the whole Saw phenomenon? Well, I thought the first one had moments (particularly the end when Jigsaw makes his big appearance in that grungy bathroom) but overall, it had too many stock characters and a crap-worthy performance by Carey Elwes. The second film offered up a couple of interesting surprises, but the MTV style editing really gave me a headache. I actually kind of liked the third picture. I thought director Darren Lynn Bousman (who returned to helm this outing) and his screenwriters found a creative way to double back on scenes from the previous films. Enter Saw IV, a choppy, disjointed rehash that, while gleefully gruesome, is more frightful than frightening. Without giving too much away, I will say that Jigsaw's fate remains as it was at the end of the third film. New to the franchise screenwriters Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton (Feast) have found a perfectly obvious way to keep this iconic killer an integral part of the plot. They've even fleshed out his back-story, bringing to the surface a pivotal reason for Jigsaw's turn to the dark side.

Also returning are a barrage of horrific new traps. I won't go into the actual plot of Saw IV, as there's far too much going on. This movie is a jumbled mess. Like Part 3, it links itself to it's predecessors through an intricate intersection of returning characters, but by the end of the movie, I had more questions than answers. The big, inevitable twist is actually the most uneventful (and uninteresting) surprise of the franchise thus far. I dig Dunstan and Melton. Patrick has kept in touch with The Boneman since they met at the Feast prremiere over a year ago (and read The Boneman's labor of love, Fanclub, admiring much of it but critiquing it for lack of horror - take a closer look PM). Feast had a lot of energy, but Saw IV was in such an apparent rush to make its Halloween deadline, that the story suffered more than any of the film's numerous victims. This up-and-coming writing duo will be back for the 5th installment and I sincerely hope they're given a little more time to flesh out the plot.