The general consesus on the AICN boards seems to be that whomever wrote the review was a plant for the studio. I agree though that its more likely the studio doesn't care enough about Repo to actually plant these reviews online.
You have a situation similar to that of 'Street Smart' in 1989. In 1989 Golan-Globus agreed to finance Christopher Reeve's pet project 'Street Smart' in order to get him back for Superman IV. Lionsgate did something similar here to get Bousman back for Saw 4, they agreed to finance and distribute his Repo project if he'd agree to return as director in Saw 4. In either case you have a studio that doesn't really care about what is obviously going to be the far better of the two films.
Bousman didn't do Repo because he was contractually obligated to do it but because he actually wanted to do it. He had so much faith in the project that he was willing to make one more Saw film (and a bad one at that) just to get the go-ahead to start on Repo immediately after.
They tried to downplay Repo in order to shift more emphasis onto their major moneymaker, the Saw franchise. They don't care much for this film, they released a trailer with a release date (in April) and have since seemed to shift the release date to (as far as I know ) TBA.
They'd prefer people to not realize that Bousman left the Saw franchise (and we'll have to settle for the former assistant director taking the reigns) to do this other film.
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