Tag line : You thought it was over. But the games have just begun...

When I went to the cinema to see this I had assumed the ending of part 3 was setting up the plot up for this one, and we'd see what became of sole survivor Jeff.  Instead, we see that despite the death of Jigsaw, another set of games are going on thanks to a mysterious accomplice, and it isn't Amanda.

This time it seems SWAT Captain Rigg (Lyriq Bent), who you may remember had minor roles in the previous 2 films, has been singled out for gameplay when the new detective in charge of the murders, Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who you also may remember was introduced in the last film, is abducted.

Rigg, who has been obsessed with finding detective Mathews (Donnie Wahlberg) ever since his disappearance in part 2, finds himself being forced to go through a series of tests involving various seedy characters in order to save Hoffman and find out what happened to Mathews.

But with the death of detective Kerry from part 3, Hoffman's abduction and now a trail of bloody corpses following the wake of Rigg's 'tests', the FBI jump on the case, with 2 of its agents Strahm (Scott Paterson) and Perez (Athena Karkanis) trying to find out what he's up to and what's happened to Hoffman.

Featuring plenty of gore, including eye gougings, knife slashings and various impalements etc, and numerous plot twists, this is an excellent follow up to "Saw 3". We also get see a lot more of how engineer John Kramer became the Jigsaw killer (with Tobin Bell reprising his roles for the flashback scenes). Overall a very good and entertaining horror film, but the series is now at the point where you really need to see the previous movies to understand what's happening. 

Overall Marks : 6/10.

Other Information.

• Alternate tag line "It's a blood drive".

• The films budget was $10,000,000.

• The movie was filmed in 32 days.

• "Saw 4" was given the go-ahead before "Saw 3" even opened at the cinema.

• The  body of the Jigsaw killer in the morgue was actually a realistic life cast prop, and not actor Tobin Bell. This was specially constructed for the autopsy scene. Similarly, the corpse of detective Kerry was also a dummy prop, Dinah Meyer came in specially during pre-production to have a life cast built of her, even though the actress herself doesn't appear in the film.

• This was the first movie in the series not to have been co-written by Leigh Wannel.

• The knives used in the "chair" scene were actually wooden.

• Donnie Wahlberg was only available for 2 days shooting owing to work commitments on another feature. So most of his scenes, mainly the ones of him in the back ground, were completed using a stunt double.

• For the autopsy scene, one of the special effects men had to double for the actor playing the pathologist during close-ups, as he couldn't hold his hands steady enough whilst they filmed the incisions.

• Some of the gore was trimmed for the theatrical release, this was re-instated for the DVD release, entitled "extreme" or "unrated" version.

• The director had filmed an additional torture scene with some guy in a glass box, which would have occurred right after the "chair" scene, but the US ratings board had a major problem with this as it was one of the most bloody scenes in the film and as this wasn't in the original script, the producers insisted he take it back out again. This was not put back in for the unrated/extreme DVD release, but the film makers plan to use it in a later film.

Cast & Crew.

Theatrical trailer (366KB).

Buy the UK DVD

Buy the UK DVD box-set (1-4).

Buy the US DVD.

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