Saw is a delicious cult horror flick in danger of being tarnished by weak-quels in the same way as A Nightmare on Elm Street. But while the films continue to vomit money we’re all going to be left with Saw-eyes.

Maybe in response to criticisms that Saw III was a plotless parade of suffering and humiliation, series regular director Bousman goes into plot overdrive, running three stories consecutively.

Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) and his accomplice Amanda are dead. But, a technically outstanding pre-credits autopsy reveals a wax-coated Dictaphone tape in his stomach informing Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) that the games have just begun.

Hoffman is soon snatched by an unknown assailant acting at Jigsaw’s posthumous behest, and tortured SWAT team commander Rigg must play a series of games involving perverts and evil-doers caught in fiendish traps to rescue his colleague and face his fears.

Hot on Rigg’s trail are two FBI agents (Scott Patterson and Athena Karkanis) who suspect Jigsaw’s ex-wife (Betsy Russell) of being involved in this fresh carnage, and flashbacks reveal what transformed the loving family man into a Sudoku sociopath.

Saw IV is better than Saw III, which is similar to saying root canal work is preferable to a full body cavity search.

Logic was shattered long ago, but audience intelligence remains insulted due to baffling twists, dead characters resurrected, yawning plot holes (a massive torture chamber was smuggled into a hotel room “piece by piece”) and typical final act cheats that leave more loose ends than a bathtub full of entrails.

Like all current 'gore-nography', Saw IV is suspense-free, overlong and plain not scary. Some of the traps are gleefully nasty (a mechanical chair which the victim must push their face through knives to unlock) and kudos as usual to the visual effects team’s stomach-churning prosthetics. But the well is running dry when the film resorts to the old 'hanging man standing on a melting block of ice' chestnut.

Horror for the Daily Mail crowd (if they could stomach the violence), the film is in no doubt Jigsaw’s despicable victims deserve their punishment.

The ending practically begs for a sequel, but please Lionsgate, no more Saw.

Rob Daniel