Saw II (2005)

THIS REVIEW WILL CONTAIN SPOILERS!

I was okay with the similarities to David Fincher’s Seven in the first Saw. It was the first in the series, the plot was great and the directing was good too. It carried itself as a standalone piece with obvious influences from elsewhere. But now we have yet another Saw film with heavy Seven themes. It’s at this point I’m wondering “Will the series ever stop being like Seven?” Though I would like this, I fear it will soon turn out to be pure torture porn, akin to Hostel, having the same lack of depth and maturity in its script.

Not that I have got that out of the way I will give a brief summary of Saw II. Imagine the first Saw, but this time the plotline of the captured people runs simultaneously to that of the investigation outside of this. Oh, and now we have 8 captured people as opposed to 2. You basically have the same movie. This time the 8 people are trapped in an entire house, which they must escape or a deadly nerve gas will kill them in a few hours. There are syringes of antidote around the household so that they can save themselves, but these involve completing tasks. One of these 8 people is the son of a detective (Donnie Wahlberg), which is where the investigation comes in. A brutal, brutal investigation.

This is where I get to some spoilers. The majority of the film revolves around completing tasks to get the syringes. But the problem with this is that none of the tasks in the film are completed successfully. One person gets two syringes; then dies before escaping; another person gets their hands trapped; another task ran out of time, bringing images of a deadly Crystal Maze. There is no tension in the film regarding these tasks because none of them ever get successfully completed, thus we stop caring.

The story is pretty well told, but it goes a bit slow. As I just said, there isn’t much tension or suspense. Not only this but the characters aren’t very well developed, being extremely one dimensional and thus are hard to identify with. Nonetheless, the plot does move forwards and we are treated to revelations throughout the movie, all culminating to a twist ending that features word play that Derren Brown would be proud of.

As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, this does seem to come dangerously close to torture porn. The fact that the film starts with an opening death made me sigh, and the gore and blood did come close to being excessive and was almost played merely for kicks. This is where I fear the plot will suffer, just to give fans what they want.

But, despite all this, I did enjoy Saw II. It was an interesting story with a good origin story for the Jigsaw Killer. The effects were good and some of the traps, while a bit over the top and Rube Goldberg-ish, seemed pretty inventive and realistic. I have to say I’m quite surprised to see how good these films are.

However, if the editing of the other films causes the screen to constantly flash and have super fast cuts like this film did then I might end up not being able to do the rest of the films as I may end up getting epilepsy!

Final Verdict: 6/10