Jigsaw’s Lair - SAW Movies

For the first part of this review, I’m going to give a general overview of the movie and what I thought about it, and hopefully there won’t be any major spoilers. I will clearly note when the spoilers start if you don’t want to read any further.

So obviously we know Jigsaw and Amanda are dead, the opening scene of the movie shows this, but it doesn’t keep Jigsaw from killing again. The movie follows Riggs, the SWAT leader from SAW 2 and 3, he’s the main police office with Detective Matthews when they raid Jigsaw’s lair in attempts to get Matthews’ son back, and he’s the officer on the scene in part 3 when they cut into the classroom where Troy was hung by chains, if you’ve seen the other movies you’ll recognize him. So the movie follows him and his inability to let people help themselves. 2 other officers are kidnapped and held in a Jigsaw trap and Riggs has 90 minutes to save them, but of course this is SAW, so it won’t be that easy, and that definitely isn’t all there is to it.

So that’s a basic plot summary and honestly I thought the movie was pretty good. A lot of people are saying that it was shit or that it didn’t make any sense, but if you’re actually a fan of the SAW movies (mainly 1 and 3) you should figure it all out at the end, except for 1 or 2 things that I can think of off the top of my head, which I will get into later once I apply the spoiler tags. But overall I thought Darren did a good job with this one, as he did the last one… sorry part 2 is currently the black sheep of the series, while not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, it’s definitely my least favorite of the series. And I think the FEAST guys did a decent job of writing, although at times I feel like they were trying to bring out too many twists and turns and they left a few things open, which I understand since they’ve already greenlit SAW V and VI so leaving the end open, ala the original, makes perfect sense, so I can’t be made about that. Now if it wasn’t certain they were making another and they left it open like this to possibly never be resolved, I would have been upset, but now we have something to look forward to.

So if you are a fan of the previous SAW movies, you should be happy with this installment. It’s not everyday that I say the 4th movie in a series is actually pretty good. After a while a movies premise starts to get old, but these guys seem to realize that and switch up things a bit. And if you’re one of the people out there that love the other movies but say this one suck, come on over to the forum and discuss why… I’ll admit I have a few gripes, but it’s a solid entry into the series and leaps and bounds above part 2.

Click the link below for my spoiler filled discussion of the movie.

NOW FOR SPOILERS - DO NOT READ BELOW THIS IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE MOVIE YET! I AM GOING TO DISCUSS SPECIFICS OF THE MOVIE AND THE END, SO PLEASE DO NOT READ BELOW IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE MOVIE AND ARE PLANNING ON IT.

The movie opens with Jigsaw laying on the autopsy table ready to be cut open. This is a pretty graphic scene, as you would expect. They remove his skull and brain then make the “Y” incision in his chest, cut open the sternum and start digging around. Upon removal of the stomach they find a block of wax inside of it, it’s a tape… the game has just begun. We see flashbacks to SAW 3 where he pours the wax onto the bedside table, covering the tape in wax, but this time we see him swallow the wax covered tape. Back at the autopsy room the coroners have called the police and a detective shows up and listens to the tape. It makes no mention of another game to be played, only the fact that Jigsaw’s work is not finished and it will live on long after he is dead. So Jigsaw is dead for the entire movie…. or so they want you to think. I don’t want to go through the entire movie giving away everything, but here’s where a lot of people are getting confused. SAW 4 takes place at the same time as SAW 3 did, you find this out at the end…. people are getting confused because at the end of part 4, the detective that is working with Jigsaw (same guy who came to the coroners office to listen to the tape at the very beginning) locks the FBI agent in the room where Jigsaw, Amanda, Lynn and Jeff all died at the end of SAW 3, along with Jigsaw’s body… so people are wondering how Jigsaw could be in the autopsy room at the beginning when at the end he’s still laying in the room in his lair…well that’s because the autopsy stuff was in present day, whereas the rest of the movie was flashback. So everything that Riggs did was flashbacks, and all of the Jigsaw and his wife stuff was flashbacks within the overall flashback… get it now?

What we don’t find out are a couple things, mainly why is the detective helping Jigsaw, he’s been helping him since at least the beginning of SAW 3, as we see in flashbacks of the Troy chainman scene, and supposedly he helped hang Detective Kerry in the angel trap…. at first I didn’t think that Amanda knew about the other Detective helping out Jigsaw, but now that I think about it, they never made mention that she didn’t. They do show that the Detective wrote that letter to Amanda that she found in her desk, but they never show what it said, I’m guessing the letter said something along the lines of Jigsaw has chose the Detective to continue his work and not Amanda, or something similar to that, which is why she’s visibly upset and then turns on everyone (in SAW 3). That is just my theory so feel free to post your own. One other thing I didn’t understand was how the lawyer that was holding Detective Matthews and the other Detective in their traps, got the huge scar on his face. I understand that he was the guy at the beginning that was in the trap with his mouth sewn shut, but it appeared as though only his lips were stitched shut, not that the whole side of his face was sewn up, or even ripped open when he ripped the stitches at the end of that scene…. maybe that is something we will have answered in part 5, which leads me to my next points.

Now, a few unanswered questions that I think will be the basis for SAW V… first of all, how did the Detective come to be an apprentice of Jigsaw. I think it’ll be similar to how Amanda did, or maybe the Detective did his own research on Jigsaw and was able to find him before the cops and wanted in… who knows, but I think we’ll get a back story to that in part 5. Or maybe Jigsaw’s wife is in on it with the Detective (dating) and she brought him into it because she is also a part of it…notice when he was interrogating her she wasn’t very intimidated, it could have all been for show… and what about Jeff’s daughter? She’s locked up somewhere and nobody knows about her… It’s cool that they made 4 take place at the same time as 3, because then they don’t have to answer that question until 5… maybe the FBI agent locked up in the room full of dead bodies will find Jeff’s tape and realize he has to find his daughter, or something along those lines, who knows…

Now the biggest question I hope that gets answered soon is what the hell happened to Dr. Gordon??? We’ve wrapped up Detective Matthews storyline, but Dr. Gordon cut off his own foot and got away and we haven’t heard from him since and unless I missed it, we’ve never seen a dead body in those tunnels outside the bathroom that Matthews and Amanda fought in… obviously something happened to Dr. Gordon otherwise he would have known exactly where that place was and would have already alerted police to the whereabouts….. ooooooh or maybe that’s how the Detective is now helping Jigsaw… Dr. Gordon escaped and went to the police.. that police officer happened to be Jigsaw’s Detective (before he was working with Jigsaw), and after leading the Detective to Jigsaw, the Detective somehow (possibly he also has a terminal disease of sorts, or something bad happened to him in the past that made him stop caring) then started working with Jigsaw…. and possibly another trap then for Dr. Gordon…. that would be really cool actually for part 5.

So overall I thought SAW 4 was a great movie and a great addition to the series. Yeah it kinda sucks that they left some things open, but this is meant to be the kick off of a whole new trilogy, so it ends almost the same way that SAW 1 ended, so everything is coming full circle, which is pretty cool. So again, if you enjoyed the other SAW movies and actually understood them, go check this one out. It may seem a little confusing when you first see it but once you think about it, it’s not as confusing as people want to think it is.

If anyone would want to discuss this stuff, I apologize but the comments just get spammed like crazy so they don’t work correctly, but the forum is always open.