Saw IV

***Saw IV*** is a horror film and is the fourth film in the *Saw* franchise.

## Plot

After the events of ***Saw lll***, the police arrive at the plant just as Hoffman leaves it with **Amanda Young**, who was acting as she was yet again another survivor form one of many Jigsaw's final games.

The rotten, beaten and worn out corpse of **John Kramer**, the Jigsaw Killer, is finally examined at the morgue. During this autopsy, a wax-coated audiotape is found in his stomach. Therefore, Detective **Mark Hoffman** is called to the morgue to listen to the tape, which contains a message from John, who subtly continues playing the act by warning Hoffman that the games will continue.

By the following week, the Chief of Police announces the end of the Jigsaw murders and promotes Hoffman to Detective Lieutenant for his efforts in solving the case, and honors the fallen police officers, **David Tapp**, **Steven Sing**, **Eric Mathews**, **Allison Kerry**, and **Daniel Rigg**. Believing with Kramer's death, the Jigsaw case was over....

iiii

iii

Following the events of **Saw lll**, Special Agent **Peter Strahm** is locked up in a room by Detective **Mark Hoffman** alongside the corpse of **John Kramer**. Strahm eventually discovers a hidden door with a tape recorder behind it. The recording warns him to stay in the room and wait for reinforcements, telling him that it could either be his sanctuary or his grave. Strahm ignores the warning and proceeds through the secret hallway, where **Amanda Young** in a pig-masked figure suddenly attacks and subdues him. All the while, Hoffman plants evidence to make it believable Jigsaw's only publicly known apprentice, Amanda Young had died along with Kramer.

When Strahm wakes up again, he finds himself in one of Jigsaw's traps, with his head trapped in a glass cube that quickly fills with water. Before running out of air, Strahm performs a tracheotomy on himself with a pen. Meanwhile, the police arrive at the plant just as Hoffman leaves it as eventually Strahm is carried out on a gurney, severely injured but still alive.

A few days later, the corpse of John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, is examined at the morgue. During this autopsy, a wax-coated audiotape is found in his stomach. Therefore, Detective Mark Hoffman is called to the morgue to listen to the tape, which contains a message from John, who subtly continues playing the act by warning Hoffman that the games will continue and that he will be tested.

By the following week, the Chief of Police announces the end of the Jigsaw murders and promotes Hoffman to Detective Lieutenant for his efforts in solving the case, and eventually Hoffman is informed that Special Agent **Lindsey Perez** succumbed to her injuries from the events of **Saw Ill**, by Strahm at the hospital to console him on her death, Strahm tells him that her last words had been "Detective Hoffman." As this results in an argument between them, Hoffman leaves the room as Strahm is later visited by his supervisor, Special Agent **Dan Erickson**, who informs him that he is off the case on his orders.

After his hospital visit, Hoffman goes to an underground catacomb area, where **Amanda Young** hands him five envelopes that contain information about the victims of the next game, that Amanda has been stalking, which is planned to begin later that night, all the while the two Jigsaw apprentices form a rivalry.

Hoffman and Young began set up the game together. Meanwhile, Peter Strahm leaves the hospital and decides to continue the investigation on his own. As he is convinced that Detective Hoffman is the one of two remaining accomplice of the Jigsaw Killer and doesn't believe Amanda Young is dead either, Strahm revisits some of the old crime scenes to undercover the whereabouts of Hoffman and Amanda.

Meanwhile the game, Amanda and Hoffman have created, takes place at the abandoned Rowan Zoological Institute and focuses on **William Easton**, an executive working for the Umbrella Health insurance company. William and his associates are responsible for finding errors in their clients' applications for the coverage of their treatment costs so they can deny the coverage for spurious reasons. In the first test of his game, William wakes up and finds himself trapped in a large, vise-like contraption with a breathing mask on his face. Umbrella's janitor, **Hank**, is in the same situation. A video recording of Amanda Young, who was once a client of Umbrella, introduces William to his game and informs him about four bombs strapped to his limbs, which will detonate if he does not pass four tests within the next 60 minutes. In his first test, he and Hank must hold their breath as long as possible. Whenever one of them takes a breath, the vises around their chests close in and eventually crush their upper bodies. As a heavy smoker, Hank cannot hold his breath longer than William and is ultimately killed, while William is released from the trap and goes on to find his next test.

In the next part of his game, William must pick up the ends of two chains connected to two small platforms. His file clerk, **Allen**, stands on one platform, while his secretary, **Addy**, stands on the other. Both of them have a noose made of barbed wire around their neck. To move on, William must let go of one chain and sacrifice the respective person while the other will survive. Addy is mentioned to have a family history of diabetes, whereas Allen is healthy but has no friends or relatives. Eventually, William decides to save Addy, resulting in Allen's death as his platform falls back and the noose hangs him.

During the first game, Strahm comes closer and closer to the secret, Hoffman throws Agent Erickson's suspicion on him, by manipulating and gaslighting **Tracy Rigg** into believing Strahm is the cause of her late husband **Daniel Rigg**'s death. As Tracy naively believes Hoffman due to Hoffman and Daniel's close relationship, Tracy goes to Agent Erickson's office, where she tells him she believes to be observed and followed by Strahm. When Erickson leaves the building, shortly after his conversation with Tracy, Hoffman uses Strahm's stolen mobile to call him but immediately hangs up and turns off the phone. Therefore, Erickson orders Special **Agent Cowan** to locate the phone's signal. Hoffman returns to the catacombs, where he reactivates the phone and places it on a table in his and Amanda's surveillance room, however intentionally doesn't inform Amanda, intended to set her up and killed. While Cowan successfully locates it and informs Erickson about the address.

Meanwhile, in the zoo's boiler room, William encounters his third test. His company's attorney, **Debbie**, has 90 seconds to find her way through a maze to retrieve a key and deactivate a device strapped to her body. If she cannot do so, the device will shoot a spear through her head and kill her. However, her path is blocked by hot steam coming from several pipes. William redirects the vapor, enabling Debbie to proceed. Upon reaching the end of the maze, Debbie finds several photos and realizes that the key to her trap is hidden inside William's body. Therefore, she attacks him with a circular saw. However, William fights her off until the timer expires and the trap is activated, resulting in Debbie's death.

When William reaches his fourth test, he finds six of his associates - **Aaron**, **Emily**, **Gena**, **Dave**, **Shelby**, and **Josh** - strapped to a spinning carousel. At regular intervals, the carousel stops, causing one participant to sit in front of a shotgun and get shot if William does not choose to save them. To do this, he has to push two buttons inside a box, which will cause his hand to be impaled by a spike. However, William can only save two of them, while the other four inevitably die. Eventually, he saves Emily and Shelby and leaves them behind to reach the end of his game.

Strahm follows Hoffman to a house that turns out to be the renovated Nerve Gas House from ***Saw II***. Inside, he finds the entrance to the hidden underground tunnel network. He eventually enters a room with a large glass coffin containing numerous broken glass shards and an audiotape. The tape, recorded by Hoffman, congratulates him for finding the room but urges him to go into the coffin, assuring him that this would be painful but was the only way to save himself. He stops the tape when he hears Hoffman approaching and hides behind the door. As Hoffman enters the room, the two start fighting and Strahm eventually pushes Hoffman into the coffin, trapping him inside. Seconds later, the door of the room slams shut. When Strahm demands to know how to open it, Hoffman points at the tape. As Strahm continues the recording, he learns he will die in this room if he does not enter the coffin. At the same time, the coffin is safely lowered into a hollow space beneath the floor as the room's walls close in on Strahm, who unsuccessfully attempts to escape through the ceiling grid. Strahm is ultimately crushed, while Hoffman watches his demise from the coffin. As Hoffman escapes the coffin, Amanda attacks Hoffman, after she learned of his attempted deception/betrayal, knocking him unconscious after a fight between the two.

Meanwhile, William reaches the final room of his test just before the timer expires and finds himself between two cages. Trapped in the first one is his sister, **Pamela Jenkins**, while **Tara** and **Brent Abbott** are in the other. Tara and Brent are the widow and son of **Harold Abbott**, who succumbed to his heart disease after William had denied the coverage of his treatment costs, which could have saved his life. A TV turns on outside their cage, showing a recording of Amanda Young. Amanda tells Tara that she has to decide upon William's fate. She can either forgive William or sentence him to death. Despite her desire for revenge, Tara cannot bring herself to kill him. However, Brent, keen on avenging his father, angrily pulls a lever next to an acid tank. A metallic grid swings down from the ceiling, piercing William's body with several needles. Hydrofluoric acid is injected into his body, causing him to die painfully as his body is slowly dissolved from the inside.

At the same time, Amanda straps Hoffman to the armrests of his chair and locks the trap device onto his head. This contraption resembles the bear trap previously used to test Amanda Young herself. As Hoffman wakes up, Amanda reveals that there has been a sixth envelope in the box, which contained a photo of him. Thereby, it becomes evident that Amanda was determined to set up Hoffman's test. After watching the end of William's game, Amanda leaves the room with the words "Game Over," intending not to give Hoffman any chance to survive for his attempted betrayal. However, Hoffman uses the trap to smash his hand and frees himself from the chair. Afterward, he pushes the trap's frontal part between two metal bars on the door window to prevent it from opening completely. Thereby, he manages to pull his head out of the trap but is heavily injured as his right cheek is brutally torn apart.

Erickson arrives there just as William dies and Hoffman escapes the trap. When the agent finds Hoffman injured from his test, Erickson calls for an ambulance, truly no longer considering Hoffman a suspect. As Erickson further examines the room, he finds Strahm's phone, numerous photos of the latest victims, and a folder with pictures of himself. He orders Cowan to put out an APB on Strahm, believing him to be Jigsaw's successor as Amanda successfully flees and Hoffman's plan of framing Peter Strahm as the new and only known Jigsaw apprentice worked.