city—and that it was the violent actions of one of her desperate “customers” that inspired John to create his very first “Jigsaw” trap (Bell is quite active in the flashbacks, giving viewers the Jigsaw they paid to see as op- posed to reducing him to a voiceover).
The resulting film is at least two-thirds successful. The ex- tended backstory of how John became Jigsaw is worthy of the series, and the arcs of the vari- ous protagonists supply all of the franchise’s hallmarks (ex- cruciating traps, moral dilem- mas, Billie the Puppet and the Pig) and conclude with another trademark “you should have known... we did warn you, and yet...” payoff. But whether or not Melton and Dunstan’s effort to continue the series works is still up in the air at the time of this writing. To be sure, the writ- ers are utterly merciless to those who haven’t seen the previous films (you can’t just hop aboard here as with something like FRIDAY THE 13TH PART VII: THE NEW BLOOD), and they thankfully resolve some of the impossibilities of the previous entry (mainly the idea that Amanda could have worked alone), but their solutions are going to require some extensive motivation to be rendered be- lievable (this, presumably, will be for SAW V to worry about)— and viewers will also likely find themselves frustrated that the SAW III cliffhanger was not re- solved to their satisfaction (a loose end in severe need of ty- ing, if we’re to move on). In a year that gave us Will
Smith in I AM LEGEND, there was no possibility that the SAW franchise would four-peat as the top genre attraction. Neverthe- less, SAW IV did extremely well in horror-unfriendly 2007 (suc- ceeding where even HOSTEL
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PART II failed). Fan and critical reaction, however, revealed an unmistakable souring at this lat- est extension, making it clear that the upcoming fifth entry will be the true test of the concept’s durability. This writer, for one, remains sufficiently intrigued. SAW IV makes its DVD de- but in an “Unrated Director’s Cut” that contains no noticeable deviations from the theatrical experience. Director Bousman joins actor Lyriq Bent for the first of two feature commentar- ies; the other is shared by pro- ducers Oren Koules and Mark Burg and two (out of six) execu- tive producers—Peter Block and Jason Constantine. We’re given the latest “Darren’s Video Diary,” and tradition continues with the “Props” and “Traps” featurettes and a music video (this time from X Japan). An inconsequential deleted scene (45s of Hoffman sharing find- ings with Strahm and Perez) is offered as a bonus. The 1:78:1 widescreen image (anamorphi- cally enhanced) and 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround soundtrack are in line with the previous Lions- gate offerings. English and Spanish subtitles and English close-captioning are provided. The director’s cut of SAW III is not yet available on Blu-ray, but the unrated director’s cut of SAW IV is for $39.99. The latter disc includes all of the afore- mentioned extras, the majority presented here in Hi-Def, as well as a new feature called “Mo- Log” that allows viewers to cre- ate their own downloaded blogs. The contents can then be made to appear on your screen while the feature plays. While we cer- tainly welcome new Blu-ray in- novations, we are not sure exactly what the point of this one is, and it also requires the user to obtain a program called Profile 2.0 for utility.
TOKYO PSYCHO
Tôkyô densetsu: ugomeku machi no kyôki “Tokyo Legend”
2004, Panik House Entertainment, DD-5.1 & 2.0/ST/MA/+/, $19.95, 78m 54s, DVD-1 By David Kalat
Between 1988 and 1989, a profoundly disturbed man in Ja- pan murdered a number of small girls, sexually violating and then dismembering their remains. He mailed body parts of his victims to their grieving parents, along with taunting letters. Eventually he was caught, and sentenced to Death Row, where he still rots. He spends his days in prison ex- actly the same way that he did outside—reading manga and watching violent horror movies. In the aftermath of such un- fathomable cruelty, it is only natu- ral for a society to do what it can to shore up its defenses against such terrors ever recurring. If horror movies inured this mon- ster to his own crimes, if they somehow inspired him, then who can blame the censors for declar- ing such stuff off-limits? This is more or less what happened, al- though compared to the “Video Nasty” debate in England around the same time, the Japanese horror ban was much milder in effect and shorter in lifespan. With violent horror considered unacceptable, filmmakers turned to more subtle scares—and thus was J-Horror as we now know it born. Ataru Oikawa made his mark in the J-Horror field first with 1998’s TOMIE, and has since distinguished himself as a director with a very long fuse. Oikawa’s films are so slow, you have time not only to pop out to the snack bar without missing anything, but to pop out to some other theater’s snack bar in an- other city. But what starts slow never finishes slow; his films use
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