Hot on the heels of the original, ‘Saw 2’…for me at least, represents an overall improvement for the franchise. It seems to have looked at what didnt quite work in ‘Saw’ while simultaineously looking to ‘up the ante’ in a fairly measured way.
The plot? Jigsaw is still at large and has this time kidnapped a group of people (including the teenage son of a cop) He’s dumped them in a houe, pumped the house full of a deadly nerve agent that will cause everyone inside to bleed uncontrollably until they die, if they dont find the antidote within 2 hours. The problem? The antidotes are all hidden behind traps that are tailored to each of the people who occupy the houses outside life. Complete the trap? get the antidote. dont? they die.
While this is going on, the cops find Jigsaws secret lair and begin trying to decode a live stream of the gang in the poison house in order to find their location. The father of the teenage son at this point, is taken to one side by Jigsaw who promises that, if he just listens to what Jigsaw has to say…then his son will be found safe and sound.
Of course…things arnt as straightforward as they appear and this all builds to a pressure cooker finale with twists turns and a final showstopper that’ll make your head spin…And…yeh…this thing largely fixes every issue I had with the original ‘Saw’ movie.
The script is much more evenly balanced, we have a clear 3 act structure thats evenly paced and transitions nicely between the acts without too much trouble. The ‘trap’ element and the ‘cops on the case’ element are much better intigrated here than in the original and weave seamlessly in and out of one another as the cops begin to learn exactly whats going on.
The tone is distinctly in the horror thriller subgenre this time around with just a dash of the psychological horror to boot! Which I thought was much more fitting for this type of film when compared to the last movie which was basically a snuff film married up to a cop thriller.
The characters are a bit underdeveloped when compared to the last film, we dont *really* get to know our main victims inside and out like the last movie. But the trade off for that is that we instead get to spend more time with them in the here and now. They tone down the ‘jumping around in time’ elements from the original, which means we dont necessarily see why our victims are here…but the film goes for a more subtle approach in trying to put across that they arnt exactly here by accident.
The film DOES build on the events of the first film, which I quite appreciated, it’s not as in your face as blatent easter eggs. but they tie these two films together really nicely to the point that they do feel like one big continued world.
And probably the biggest reason for the boos in quality, the film runs to *just* over 91 minutes…a good 15 or so minutes shorter than the last film, which allows it to really keep the energy up and deliver a much more concentrated effort than the slightly sleepy offering of the last entry.
The direction feels a lot more considered, we’ve traded ‘on set’ styalization for basically colour grading the whole film in piss yellow (which I was NOT a fan of.) but i’d say this film does have a much greater balncing act to work with when compared to the last film… having to manage 6 or 7 characters actions all at the same time while also keeping in mind the boundaries of the frame, blocking, the line and keeping the lighting, cine and continuity teams all in lock step…its no easy task.
Its a studio production, so it was almost guarenteed to at least meet the basics, but I feel this film does give up a little of its creative zeal, in order to firm up the character direction, dialogue deliveries and set management…which is a trade I think was ultimately worth it.
The cine seems to be much more coherent this time too. shots seem well composed, the films use of flashbacks is much more selective, but that means they feel much more significant than in the last movie, I have issues with the use of colour and post production colour grading here…it looks dull AND icky…but not in a good way.
We also seem to see the return of those weird, seizure inducing quick cut sequences when the traps are in action…Which im still not a fan of, but at least here the editors seemingly paced them out a little better, made them feel less irritating and a bit more considered on why they’re cutting the way they are. They also space those kind of edits out a bit more over the runtme, which I approve of because the longer gaps between that kind of weirdness actually kind of lets me appreciate them a bit more. I still dont think they work! but they work better here than they did previously.
The edit too feels altogether much stronger. We still do have some moments to slow down and take in the action, but the film keeps a solid marching pace throughout, never slows down to the point that it feels padded, seuences have decent room to breath with carefully selected cuts and creative use of B-roll. Especially in the third act where the editing really helps bring the plotline to life in a way that…in lesser hands it probably would have fallen over quite spectacularly.
Performance wise, Tobin Bell is delightful on screen as ‘Jigsaw’ John Kramer. he’s softly spoken and passively malicious. I could quite easily see comparisons to a ‘down market’ Hannibal lectre…But given this is really the first time we’ve had any actual involvement with the character I think Bell does a really good job of setting him up, establishing his rules, backstory and boundaries and im VERY intreagued to see where we go from here with the character.
Also a delight (and returning from the original Saw) we have Shawnee Smith as ‘Amanda’ who’s back playing Jigsaws games for a round 2, shes superb here really bringing TOTAL fear, confusion and carnage to proceedings in a quite spectacular way. she animates wonderfully and absolutely sells you on the terror shes feeling (the trap she has to complete in this set my teeth on edge…eesh)
The rest of the cast are fine enough…not particularly astounding, but theres no weak link, they’re all totally imersed in the situation, play it completley legitimately and deliver their lines with total conviction…I honestly cant really complain about any of them…
Apart from Donnie Whalberg as Eric Matthews (the teen sons cop dad) He doesnt really get much of a range to work with, he’s kind of an asshole, and while he IS set up as a main protagonist…he’s neither a hero or an antihero…I think had the script really given him more of a solid basing, I could have got on with the performance a bit more. Instead; his characters a bit of a vipers nest of half baked ideas and he swings through several TOTALLY contrasting character performance styles across the runtime ultimately not really winning me over.
Topping all this off, the soundtrack is a much MUCH more subdued offering this time, barring the end credits song; a lot of the PAINFUL early 2000s metal and heavy rock tracks have been pulled back and instead we have a more traditional horror scoring. Its not particularly notable. But fixing a bad score by replacing it with one that…isnt really memorable, but at least didnt have me wanting to watch the thing with ‘subtitles only’ is a step in the right direction in my book.
I was actually kind of surprised by how much I enjoyed ‘Saw 2’ it feels a lot more coherent as a production than the previous entry, and I was delighted to see (and slightly creeped out) that they managed to more or less fix every oddly specific issue that I had witht he previous film and then build on it a bit more.
I dont think this will be a film I revisit regularly, but it is one I definitely could see myself checking out again in future. and it’d be one where, much like the first film, if your okay with gore and dont mind a little bit of torture here and there. I think it’s worth checking out.
TYTD Reviews 