One of the most prominent themes of this movie was the use of female sexual powerlessness as a means to strike fear in the audience. There are two lengthy scenes where sexual powerlessness occurs. I will discuss one. The protagonist Riggs (Lyriq Bent) is faced with a moral dilemma. He either saves his fellow detectives or saves a prostitute. Jigsaw convinces the prostitute that if she kills Riggs then she will not have to go to jail for her crimes. When Riggs first sees her, her head is covered with a pig's head. Her entire body is in bondage. A 15 second screen shot from her high heels all the way up to the pig's head shows her breasts and thighs. Even in a horror movie, a woman in bondage and being tortured must look sexy. No where in the film are the men required to be physically and sexually objectified.

In Saw IV, both women and men are in bondage. Both women and men suffer from a huge power differential between themselves and the torturer. The difference between the males and female is not the magnitude of the torture, but rather, how the tortured respond to pain and powerlessness. All of the men in the film attempt to fight their way out of being tortured. The female character begs for help. The way that men react to powerlessness and the way women respond is entirely different. The writers Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan characterize men in the film to fight for their rights even though they are "in the wrong" until the bitter end. There is an endearing quality to a person who fights for their lives until the very end ... even if they are the antagonists. The prostitute was not written to have a fighter's spirit. She was characterized as being self-defeating and desperate.

The two other female characters were protagonists of the film. Jill (Betsy Russell) was the wife of Jigsaw. From the very beginning, she was portrayed as a lier and as much of a crook as her husband. Quite the contrary, Jill did not believe that "the end justifys the means" as Jigsaw did. The cops discredited her testimony every step of the way. It was as if a wife cannot think differently than her husband. Jill maintained her autonomy throughout the film. The price for her autonomy was harassment by the police detectives.

The other female character was Agent Perez (Athena Karkanis). Like in Transformers, another highly trained professional was discredited by the patriarchy. Agent Perez took the moral high ground, but her superior, which just happened to be male, ignored her advice and morality. Agent Perez literally died of curiosity in the movie.

How could this film be feminist friendly and still maintain it’s pop appeal?

1. Characterize females in horror movies to fight out of torture as opposed to having a desperate and self-defeating attitude.

2. Exemplify female autonomy (independence) from male co-actors in a normalized manner instead of it being portrayed as atypical and out of the norm.

3. Rape and other forms of sexual assault where female are consistently the victim create a stereotype that females are the only victims of sexual assault. In horror films, why is it that only women are the targets of rape? Why not males? Either way it is just as brutal and adds some variety to the torturous encounters.

4. Stop making female physical and sexual objectification the norm.