By Geno McGahee
When you strike horror gold, a sequel is right around the corner, even if the series is not ready for one. We saw this with JEEPERS CREEPERS, a good movie made by a real-life creeper, but the quick follow-up was more of a money-grab than a quality film. In 2004, SAW went up against a very mediocre lineup of movies at the box office and became the movie to see. It’s a good movie but it’s not spectacular. It was enough, however, to go right back into production and make a second one, simply with the title SAW II.
As expected, Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is up to his old tricks, kidnapping people that he feels aren’t enjoying their life enough and giving them options to either do something painful or yucky to survive. The first poor soul had to dig out his eye to stop this killer mask from clamping his head and killing him. He tried. (Spoiler) He died. I’m not sure if I should have even called this a spoiler. If you don’t think the first guy in the film is going to die, then you know nothing of horror movies.
Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) is a detective with an edge and his son, Daniel (Erik Knudsen), is having some trouble with the law. Daniel doesn’t have a lot of love for his father and Eric is quite the hot head. He erupts on his son and basically tells him to get lost. Father knows best? Not here he doesn’t.
Jigsaw is tracked down, but he asks for a face to face talk with Matthews. When the detective learns that the killer has kidnapped his son and is holding him in a room with a bunch of other people, he becomes willing to talk if it means saving his boy. Jigsaw knows a lot about the detective and wants to expose his dark side while this group that are all linked to him in one way or another fight for survival.
Amanda (Shawnee Smith) is back. The former Jigsaw subject has been selected again. Daniel is there as well. We also have a group of former prison inmates. There’s Jonas (Glenn Plummer), Addison (Emmanuelle Vaugier), Obi (Will Burd) and three other criminals including the soft but tough Laura (Beverly Mitchell) and muscle-bound thug, Xavier (Franky G). They are informed via audiotape that they are inhaling a toxin and that they need the antidote to survive. This leads to much argument in the group and several death traps. I often compare SAW to CUBE and the comparison to this film is very strong. It’s obvious that the makers of SAW II watched CUBE a few times.
As Matthews gets frustrated with Jigsaw, the group continues to struggle and we systematically lose them to the traps or to each other. The biggest problem with this group was the biggest actor that they had, Xavier. The character is so abrasive and empty that it’s difficult to get into the scenes that he is a part of. He’s a jerk just to be a jerk…and as the film proceeds, it gets harder and harder to take. Many of his actions don’t make any sense. Each of the people have a number on the back of their neck that they need to know and instead of working with the people and asking them what it was, he elects to slice the skin off the back of his neck to see it. It just didn’t make a lot of sense.
Matthews eventually gets to the place where his son is but he has fallen into the Jigsaw trap and will now pay for his sins. We get a new addition to team Jigsaw here in a not so shocking moment and the future looks bright with other sequels obviously planned.
SAW II has a lot of problems. This film obviously wanted to be very dark, but there really isn’t anyone to root for. The hero is a jerk and most of the other characters are totally unlikable. Xavier makes up most of the movie and he’s terrible and repetitive and the ending doesn’t make much sense. (Real spoilers this time) If Jigsaw used the same building as he did where he killed the first guy and allowed the doctor to leave after cutting off his foot, why wouldn’t the police find it and at the minimum, get rid of the food and dead bodies? If Jigsaw was up to his old tricks again, shouldn’t the police look at the property he used the first time? Sure, it’s unlikely that lightning would strike twice, but it did here and they could have nipped this one in the bud right away, but these are the same pricks that didn’t care to check the scene after the doctor escaped the year before. So, I shouldn’t be surprised that they didn’t go back to the scene of the first crime.
The only character that I found really sympathetic was Amanda. Shawnee Smith did well and was easy to support. She turned into the highlight of this film. The tone of the film was just too negative though and that’s where it loses it. I didn’t feel any connection to any of the “good guys” in this one. It is obvious that they wanted to strike while the iron was hot and just pumped this one out with very little thought.
SAW II is worth a watch. It has its moments but it pales in comparison remarkably to the first.
Rating: 5/10
