SAW IV
(Review)

Before we dive into this, I think it’s interesting to note that Saw is by far the most successful and popular horror franchise of the 21st century (or any century, for that matter). Truth is, there really isn’t any competition. All told, the four installments thus far have raked in nearly $300 million, with Saw V already scheduled for an October 2008 release.
Of course, if the 80’s taught us horror geeks anything, it’s that there are a lot of ups and downs in even the best franchise, and Saw is no exception.
I loved the original, but felt that the second had too many unrelatable, hastily sketched characters running around just waiting to get iced by the next gruesome trap. And while the third did attempt to trace its way back towards the dark territories mapped out so splendidly in Saw, it still fell far short of the heights scaled by the original.
Which brings us to Saw IV.

So, to get this out of the way: yes, Jigsaw is dead. He died in Saw III and he’s still dead.
Long live Jigsaw.

As I’ve mentioned ‘round these parts before, I was worked up about this fourth installment since the screenplay was written by the delightfully twisted wretches behind Feast, Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan.
So was my excitement justified? Yes, and no.
To begin with, and perhaps most importantly, after the original, this is the second best Saw installment to date. It manages to do a number of things in its 95-minute running time: delve into the pre-Jigsaw history of John Kramer; elaborate further on Jigsaw’s methodology; explain how all the heavy-lifting and legwork in previous chapters were done by a terminally-ill man and a mentally unstable girl; and tie in rather well to the events depicted in Saw III.
It’s clear that Melton and Dunstan understand what makes the franchise tick, and they serve up all that the fans have come to expect from a Saw movie, from the gore (and oh, so much of it) to the climactic twist (the same sort used in Saw II, though pulled off far more effectively here).

Opening with Jigsaw’s autopsy—quite possibly the most audacious on-screen post-mortem I’ve ever come across, something that should make even the most jaded CSI procedural hound squirm—Saw IV is also the bloodiest of the lot.
Which, of course, is one of the points of a Saw movie. But I’m just wondering where all this is going. How far can this franchise go? What celluloid atrocities will we witness in Saw IX?
And as wickedly clever as the script gets, it does have an annoying tic of pumping the audience with retroactive history in that by-now familiar Saw quick-cut editing style courtesy of Kevin Greutert. This method works for me when it’s used with a modicum of restraint, or when it’s used to fill us in on characters we’re already semi-familiar with.
In Saw IV, it just feels like this was done a tad too much, to the point where it becomes a lazy narrative cheat: why bother taking the time to establish a character when we can just stutter-strobe through their life history in nine seconds before we turn them into gobbets of mangled flesh?
And while Saw IV also—and perhaps belatedly—turns its attention to the other law enforcement types caught in the bloody wash of Jigsaw’s wake (notably Costas Mandylor’s Hoffman, introduced in the third installment, and Lyriq Bent’s Rigg, who’s been around since Saw II), it also sadly continues in the grand, bone-headed tradition of the franchise, to depict those same law enforcement types barreling headlong into dark rooms and abandoned warehouses without back-up, protective gear, or so much as a little Post-It to tell their other cop friends where they ran off to. Idiots.

As a microcosm of the franchise itself though, I suppose it’s only apt that Saw IV displays a range of ups (the traps are baroquely wicked and the bloodshed and mayhem suitably graphic, while the decidedly non-linear narrative pays attention to what came before, even giving us a cameo from one of Saw II’s cast of ne’er-do-wells; seeing Gilmore Girls’ Scott Patterson as FBI Agent Strahm is also a kick and a half) and downs (the most significant of which I’ve mentioned above).
Looking back, I guess this is probably the best case scenario, since I honestly don’t think I expected this installment to be better than Saw. I’m happy it’s continued to lift the franchise from the offal-filled pit it found itself in following Saw II. But the twisted point of Jigsaw, his hellish Hallmark life lessons, have been both hammered in, and hammered to death, over the course of four films.
While Saw IV not only reinforces that mindset, it also strives to lay out—in its own effed-up, helter-skelter way—Jigsaw’s idealistic past and his blood-drenched present, as well as offer up a tantalizing suggestion of the dark future. Given that achievement, this latest installment has certainly justified its reason for existence. (It’s also gone a long way in explaining why Saw III always felt like a story that had only been half-told.)
But as I pointed out earlier, where are we going with this? We already know what Jigsaw wanted to say, and we’ve seen a whole lotta blood shed to make that point.
So what will Saw V have to say that will necessarily be new and worth our attention (and money)?
Time will tell, I imagine.
Till then, I’m almost tempted to revisit Saw III for a neat (and bloody) double feature.
Almost.

Parting shot: Reviews of Saw and Feast can be found in the Archive.

(Saw IV OS and images courtesy of shocktillyoudrop.com.)

DEXTER
Season 2 Episode 8
‘Morning Comes’
Written by Scott Buck
Directed by Keith Gordon
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

This is one of those great episodes where a whole lotta sh!t goes down, so let’s get to it.

Following the fire at her place, Lila’s been spending a whole lotta time at Dex’s, much to Deb’s annoyance; while Dex comes to think of them as a “cobra and a mongoose,” Deb thinks of Lila as a “gross, English titty vampire.”
With the Lila thing going on—he’s also beginning to suspect that maybe, Lila did set the fire on purpose—Dex is cold-cocked at work when Lundy brings in the FBI to help investigate the cases of the Bay Harbor Butcher victims, since he thinks the Butcher could have a law enforcement background, and could, in fact, be one of the Miami PD.
Asked to review the cases he handled, where the perp ended up back on the streets, only to get iced by the Butcher, Dex is forced to cover the fact that he fudged the blood work by admitting that he got sloppy with said blood work (which he never does).

Unnerved by Lundy’s sudden attack, Dex realizes he needs to put some distance between himself and Lila, so he can focus on staying a step ahead of Lundy’s hunt. So he lies about going bowling, only to have Lila insist on coming along, getting the address of the alley off him.
Later, at the alley parking lot, Santos Jimenez (who Dex decided not to kill a couple of episodes back) attacks Dex, wounding him in the arm, but Lila’s screams bring Angel and the rest of the bowling team to the rescue, and Jimenez drives off.
Dex lies to Angel about the attacker trying to grab his watch, but later on tells Lila it was Jimenez.

In the wake of the attack, Dex realizes he needs to take care of Jimenez, and begins to consider the possibility that he can’t really change and has to embrace who he’s always been.
Dex tracks Jimenez to a cabin out in the Everglades, which is stocked full of cocaine. (Apparently, Jimenez never got out of the coke business.)
It’s here that Dex falls off the wagon, and chainsaws Jimenez into itty bitty pieces.

Meanwhile, Lundy asks two things of Deb: 1) to help with the case investigation, as she’s new to Homicide, so there should be no conflict of interest as these are old cases they’re looking into, back when she was still with Vice; and 2) to have dinner with him.
She says “Yes” to both, reluctantly to the first, and eagerly to the second.
The date, if you must know, goes swimmingly, and the two seem to be really into each other.
Back on the work stuff, Deb asks Angel to help her with her investigation, which leads to a license plate number of a car that quite possibly belongs to the Bay Harbor Butcher.
It’s while working late on tracing the license plate that Deb sees Lila come to the station, where she’s brought Dex some dinner, since he said he was “working late.” (He is, of course, just not at the station.) Amused, Deb can’t help but drive the point home: Dex lied to you.

So what does Deb’s favourite gross, English titty vampire do, but sneak into Rita’s place (using the key she filched from Dex) to see if he’s there. Rita finds the fact that the door was unlocked odd, and calls Dex to ask him if he’s been by, something she’d already asked him not to do.
Having finished chainsawing Jimenez, Dex has just looked through Jimenez’s wallet, and finds a note with the bowling alley’s address on it. Dex realizes it was Lila who clued Jimenez as to his whereabouts. Dex then checks his key ring, and finds the key to Rita’s place missing, so he tells Rita to get out of the house and call the cops. He also leaves Jimenez’s sawed-up body in the cabin.
Making sure the cops watch Rita, Dex goes over to Lila’s and demands the key back. He then asks her if she called Jimenez, and Lila says it was because she felt Dex drifting away from her, and she just wanted him back, wanted him just like at the motel, after he’d gone to see Jimenez that first time.
Realizing she’s far more dangerous than his “addiction,” Dex warns Lila to stay away from Rita, and to stay away from him.
Yahoo! In Dex’s own words, “The Lila experiment is over.”

But…
When Deb cracks the license plate number, it turns out to be for a vehicle that had been impounded at their own lot. Thus, it appears that Lundy was right, the Bay Harbor Butcher really is one of the Miami PD. Lundy asks that this be kept between him, Deb, and Angel, though Deb and Angel are understandably distraught that the killer is someone who works at the station.
Thankfully, there are no records as to who exactly signed the vehicle out, used it in the commission of a murder, then signed it back in.

But…
When Doakes is brought back in for Lundy’s investigation, he finds out from Lundy that one of the cases involved some sloppy blood work, and something clicks in Doakes’ mind.
He walks out on the inquiry and later that night, breaks into Dex’s apartment (while Dex is off taking care of Jimenez and Lila, and Deb is at the station), and the mofo finds the blood slides Dex hides in his AC unit!
Man, Dex is so screwed!

I really thought that somehow, things would get lain on Doakes’ doorstep, that he’d somehow get fingered as being the Bay Harbor Butcher.
I also thought that just as he’d discover the damning evidence, that Lila would arrive and end up killing him, thinking he was a burglar or something. Then she’d see the slides and discover Dex’s deep, dark secret.
But that’s not how things panned out. She gets dumped, and no one’s around to keep Doakes from squealing about the slides.
Holy guacamole!
Man, Dex is so screwed!

(Image courtesy of sho.com.)

DEXTER
Season 2 Episode 6
‘Dex, Lies, and Videotape’
Written by Lauren Gussis
Directed by Nick Gomez
(WARNING: SPOILERS)

Last episode’s hopeful note is shot to sh!t as things unravel on Dex rather quickly.

Discovering Harry’s affair with his mother, Dex realizes that the man he’s idolized and followed all these years was less than the paragon of virtue he believed him to be.
And without that foundation to depend on, Dex realizes he doesn’t know who he is anymore, or who he’s supposed to be. Lila believes this time of uncertainty allows Dex the golden opportunity to reinvent himself.
Dex has one triumph (he’s able to delete the footage of his cleaning his boat, during a juvenile fire alarm diversion), but gets clipped by a whole mess of other things.

Doakes gets back on Dex’s a$$ when he has a conversation with Deb and she tells him quite plainly that, No, of course Dex isn’t an addict.
So Dex finds Doakes listening to the tapes of Harry and his mother, getting Dex and Doakes into that potentially violent stare off that we’ve all been waiting for.
Dex ends up bringing the whole thing to LaGuerta, who manages to convince Dex to hold off on the official complaint while she talks with Doakes.
LaGuerta’s chat with Doakes only convinces LaGuerta that Doakes is obsessed, a side of him she’s seen and a side of him that cost them their relationship. She tells Doakes to let this one go. (We all know he won’t though, right?)

Lila meanwhile, has dinner with Rita and Gail (at Gail’s instigation), an encounter that leads to Rita overhearing a phone message from Lila to Dex, where she stupidly mentions, “Oh, it’s good I didn’t slip up and mention the road trip and that we spent the night together.”
Duh.
Rita dumps Dex’s a$$ in an emotional New York minute.
Pissed off about that (and the thing with Doakes), Dex gets angry at Lila, the sort of angry that conveniently alchemizes into hot sex. Then, just as Dex leaves Lila to get back to work, Rita calls him and says they should talk later that evening.

While all that psychodrama’s going down, there’s a Bay Harbor Butcher copycat who makes a botched attempt at a home invader just out of jail.
The copycat turns out to be Ken Olson (Prison Break’s Silas Weir Mitchell), whose mother was once hurt by the recently released jailbird, and claims to have been inspired by the Bay Harbor Butcher’s handiwork. When Dex digs around to find some dirt on Olson, he discovers that Olson‘s actually killed before, so Dex does him in, but doesn’t bother to dispose of the body parts this time out, leaving them for the cops to find.

After his date with Olson, Dex drops by Rita’s and they have their talk.
Dex says the road trip was for him to try to get closure regarding his mother’s murder, and that it was strictly sponsor and sponsee between Lila and him.
And though Rita’s hurt that Dex chose to share this pivotal moment in his life with Lila and not her, she’s apparently willing to accept that.
But.
She asks Dex if he had sex with Lila in that motel room, and Dex says, “No. Not then.”
And once again, Rita dumps Dex’s a$$ in an emotional New York minute.

Dex leaves Rita’s, walking out into a downpour, symbolic of his becoming a new man, as all that was taught him by Harry has come to be suspect.
And who does Dex go to after leaving Rita’s?
Lila.
Ugh.
This better be resolved quickly, as I’ve come to really care about Rita as she’s grown into this stronger person since Season 1, and I’ve never really warmed to Lila. (And let’s face it, it was her big mouth that got Dex into hot water with Rita in the first place.)

Over on the Deb front, Lundy’s sudden interest in Dex (which gets Dex para over a fair section of the episode) raises her issues about Dex always being the “Morgan superstar.” When she brings this up with Gabriel, he instinctively hones in on the fact that Deb’s crushing on her boss.
Towards the episode’s end, Deb’s gotten anxious that Lundy’s about to turn the whole investigation over to the FBI (thus returning her to “retard” status, since she feels Lundy was the only one who really took her seriously), and she asks him flat out, and he says, “No. I’m afraid you’re still stuck with me.”
Then, when Lundy asks for Dex yet again, Lundy notices Deb’s reaction, and calls her on it. So Deb spills the beans, but Lundy says it’s not about Dex. It’s just that Masuka’s getting on his tits and he wants some other forensics dude to depend on.
Relieved, Deb hugs Lundy, a little too long, and quite definitely awkwardly…

Parting shot: Congratulations to Michael C. Hall, Tim Schlattmann and all the other writers on the show, as well as the entire cast and crew, for getting the Golden Globe and WGA noms, and the AFI nod. (See Afterthoughts (33) & (34) in the Archive.)

(Image courtesy of sho.com.)