Saw IV (2007)

Image credit: Steve Wilkie

CAUGHT IN A TRAP Saw IV succumbs to the dreaded ''how I became a serial killer backstory'' gambit

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. The man behind Jigsaw, embodied by dour Tobin Bell, is dead, but there are flashbacks to how he became a psycho, and he haunts Saw IV with taped messages. He now imparts so many life lessons via his Rube Goldberg thresher devices that he's starting to turn into the Rod Serling of severed body parts. Now that's torture. D+