If violence is going to be your calling card, you have to make a choice: big gore or horrific exploitation. You don't get to do both.

Full Review | Oct 27, 2017

This gruesomely efficient horror sequel shows noticeable wear and tear.

Full Review | Jul 23, 2008

Torture, you may recall, used to be an unparsable, unpardonable sin. Now it's porn.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 17, 2007

Previously, Jigsaw and the filmmakers played fair, but too much about this latest instalment seems simply arbitrary.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 3, 2007

The reports of torture porn's demise may have been greatly exaggerated, but this fourth entry in the mutilate-yourself-or-die series joins what may be the worst genre of the decade: the lamely ''sympathetic'' serial-killer backstory.

Full Review | Original Score: D+ | Oct 31, 2007

It's deeply unsettling; just like a horror movie should be.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 30, 2007

This death trap may be rusty, but as long as it keeps generating fresh blood, it's unlikely to slam shut anytime soon.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 29, 2007

Just as Jigsaw tests his victims, the franchise's own test will be whether such suspension can be maintained, or if matters lapse into a torture chamber of self-parody.

Full Review | Oct 29, 2007

An incomprehensible cacophony of screams, shock cuts, dour pseudo-philosophizing, heavy metal mutilation and low-rent TV-standard performances.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 29, 2007

The Syriana of slasher films, so complicated and circuitous that your only hope of understanding everything is to eat lots of fish the night before and then watch each of the previous films, in order, right before you enter the theater.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 29, 2007

The famously inventive torture sequences here seem depleted of imagination.

Full Review | Oct 29, 2007

The original Saw was crafted with thought and precision. Saw IV is an orgy of blood.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 29, 2007

The dullest Saw in the shed.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 29, 2007

A film as edgy as a rubber knife.

Full Review | Original Score: 0/4 | Oct 29, 2007

Saw IV is no Saw III. Just as Saw III is no Saw II. But neither Lionsgate, the Saw distributor, nor the North American box office seems to care.

Full Review | Original Score: .5/4 | Oct 29, 2007

After two solid entries and an OK one, the franchise is getting long in the tooth: This one is Saw It Be-IV.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 29, 2007

Over the course of [its] sequels, the Saw franchise took a novel, if distasteful, idea and basically tortured it to death.

Full Review | Original Score: 1/5 | Oct 27, 2007

A commercially savvy though ultimately empty combination of warped morality tale, mystery, gore-fest, and torture porn.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Oct 27, 2007

At a certain point you have to wonder how long audiences are going to keep flocking to this stuff.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4 | Oct 26, 2007

Saw IV almost makes you believe there are hundreds of rooms out there at this very minute with puppets, tricycles, and audio tapes just waiting for the next game.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2007