We return to the Saw franchise for the first sequel in the series, appropriately enough named Saw II. After the runaway success of the first movie, and the rise in popularity of the so-called "torture porn" subgenre (and whether or not the early Saw films deserved to be included in that subgenre is still up for debate, I think), the studios knew they had a new hot property on their hands. But how best to capitalise on this?
Why, by upping the ante, of course! Instead of two people in a locked room mystery, this time there's seven people!
Detective Eric Matthews is a cop on the edge. He's riding a desk after some "questionable" arrests, his son Daniel is indulging in petty theft, and a serial killer is leaving messages for him at crime scenes. The killer in question is of course the Jigsaw Killer, and after a spot of detective work that's more memory work Matthews tracks him down to his lair and he and a SWAT team go to arrest him. They find that "Jigsaw" is in fact a terminally-ill man, and he has a counter-proposal for Matthews - if the detective sits and listens calmly to Jigsaw for a couple of hours, then his son will be returned to him safe - because Jigsaw has kidnapped Daniel and locked him in a house with six others - all people Matthews had put away with his less-than-honest practices. The house is also slowly filling with nerve gas that will kill them in two hours unless they can find the antidotes hidden around the house and/or escape. All of this is shown to Matthews via CCTV set up in the house - will he be able to beat Jigsaw at his game and save his son?
If you've ever wanted to see a member of New Kids on the Block beat up a dying cancer patient, then this is the film for you. Donnie Wahlberg plays Detective Eric Matthews and is quite effective as your typical movie cop who's not averse to roughing up the occasional suspect or planting a bit of evidence, as cliched as the role may be. At least here the role is turned on its head and isn't portrayed as a positive. Also turning up on the cop side is Dizzy from Starship Troopers; and of course we also have John Tobin and Shawnee Smith returning to reprise and expand upon their roles as well. Tobin in particular has a much larger and more important role - from lying in the middle of a bathroom floor pretending to be dead for most of the first film to actually getting to expand upon Jigsaw's backstory and motivations - after being diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, he tried to kill himself but survived. After that, he decided to use his remaining time to help others gain the same new perspectives on life that he had, and created his "games" to test people. Basically it's Darwinism in rather extreme action.
So of course the traps return, and there are more of them this time around as well. They're still not really on the level of so-called "torture porn" that people tend to associate with this series (and to be fair, later films do fall into that category), but they are taking their first steps towards it here. The Incinerator Trap and the Peephole Trap (the latter of which isn't particularly complicated at that) are probably the most gruesome ones, but the worst one for me at least was the Hypodermic Needle Pit. Faced with that as an option I'd just accept my death by nerve gas and move on.
Another thing that's still relatively uncomplicated in Saw II is the plot. At this point in the series we've just got Jigsaw and his Darwinist traps, and he only has the one "apprentice" to carry on his work. Yes, Jigsaw's plans are still finely tuned enough to account for every eventuality that I'm surprised that he's not listed on the Xanatos Gambit page of TV Tropes, but it's at least not necessary to have a flowchart on hand to keep track of everyone just yet. Interestingly enough, Saw II wasn't even originally a Saw movie - director/writer Darren Lynn Bousman originally had a script called The Desperate, but had been unable to get it made for several years. Then, when Saw became the hit it did, producers called Bousman and asked him if they could turn his script into a Saw sequel. After that, Bousman stayed on for the next two movies, which is why we'll find that this and the next two films all fit together quite neatly.
All in all, Saw II isn't a bad film at all. Maybe pushing the boundaries of unbelievability just a little with some characters and situations, but at this point it's still about the plot and the mystery more than the Rube Goldberg deathtraps, and that's never a bad thing.
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