One of the big quotes flying around Comic Con this year was Saw 4 producer Mark Burg pronouncing that the MPAA had given their first cut of Saw 4 an NC 17 rating. He acknowledged that they’d scale it back to get an R instead… but the big quote was: “One day we’d like to have the guts and leave it like it is“. Don’t worry Mark, that’s what the DVD is for.
The film has indeed been scaled back as noted by the good folks of Slahfilm:
Well no guts this time around (apparently), because the MPAA have given a new cut of the film an R-Rating for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture throughout, and for language. I’m sure we’ll be able to see more of what the film could have been when the unrated dvd gets released next year (like we assume it will).
The problem with all of this is that it seems to suggest that Saw 4 is continuing down the ill fated path started upon by Saw 2, and ultimately ruined Saw 3. The first Saw film, while certainly not perfect, was as much thriller as it was horror. The film aimed to engage your head as much as it aimed to make you jump out of, or squirm in, your seat. It had character development, it had plot, it had fear.
The second Saw was pretty decent… but you could recognize a greater emphasis on the “shock” factor, and less on solid story telling. Saw 3 just abandoned everything and went all out torture porn. It seems we should have little hope that Saw 4 will be any different. Oh well… let’s wait and see.
