It should come as no surprise that something as profitable as Saw, er, saw a sequel sooner rather than later. What’s astounding is how quickly that sequel came out – just under one year. That’s a remarkable turnaround, especially when there wasn’t anything preplanned. A new, logical follow-up had to be conceived, written, filmed and released, all in scant time, and there weren’t even any rip-offs around to leech off of yet. (Oh yes, the more imitated franchises will just buy out scripts meant to mimic an original – see the Die Hard sequels.)
Oh course, for that latter issue, it helps that your film is itself a rip-off. There must’ve been something in the water in the first half of the ‘00s, because torture pornography movies were just happening, Saw unseen. Take for instance an unproduced script from two years prior, The Desperate by Darren Lynn Bousman (the mastermind behind Repo! The Generic Opera). A cheap Se7en knockoff (also Cube), The Desperate’s chances of production worsened post-Saw, because it was now deemed a Saw knockoff. No reason to put together The Desperate when Saw II is on its way; however, you can save your time, and simply use Bousman’s script.
This is what they did, with original screenwriter Leigh Whannell rewriting The Desperate to fit into Saw’s intensive mythos. As a compromise, they gave directing duties to Bousman, while original Saw-smith James Wan retreated to the position of producer. So with the sudden boost of energy brought on by an outside torture pornographer, Saw II could start to take shape.
In producing the first sequel, one must always ask a certain question. Sequel escalation is assumed, but simply making every part of an original bigger would merely yield a longer movie. Instead, one must pinpoint the specific preferred elements to maintain. From Saw, that would be the central Jigsaw Killer (as opposed to, oh, the story of old One-Foot Lawrence), with an emphasis on his lovingly baroque traps. Add to that a certain blind devotion to the Church of the Twist Ending, and you have the chance to replay the feel of the first Saw, while updating the horror element.
A sequel is also a chance to improve upon one’s former mistakes – this doesn’t seem to happen too often, for whatever reason. The narrative of Saw II is generally superior to that of Saw, mostly because it’s all one single, cohesive story – at least, by Saw standards. Flashbacks are still utilized, but MUCH more sparingly, and to greater purpose. Sadly, one must maintain certain defining series elements, good or bad – hence Saw II continues Saw’s nauseous devotion to hyper-editing and general filmic incomprehensibility. It gives the sheen of edginess, rather unearned. (Watching the “making of” extras, it occurs most of the grimy contour is added in post-production, touching up some underwhelming viciousness.)
Saw II’s opening scene is a statement of principles of sorts. It concerns some poor schmoe named Michael, who awakes in an already-familiar Jigsaw predicament. A “Venus fly trap”…trap is affixed to his cranium (I’d’ve called it a “miniature iron maiden,” but shows what I know), and Mike has but one minute to find the key before it purees his face. And that key is inside his eyeball! Fulci this ain’t, as the self-performed eye poking lacks the visceral feel (and viscera feel) needed – here hyper-editing serves us ill, when disgusting slow shots would be more effective. Hey, I’m not sayin’ if we should find it entertaining, just how! But no matter, eyeball sufficiently gouged, ker-runch goes Mike’s skull!
Here’s the thing. Mike’s fate is mostly immaterial to the story as a whole, despite the rather token police investigation which follows. It still serves a few functions. First, here we have a “reverse bear trap” reversal, a rather literal sequel escalation. It’s also the classic body count horror movie opening, the Saw equivalent of having two teens necking at Make-Out Point, then getting slaughtered with an axe. Sure, Saw’s mise en scène is distinct from the teeny-bopper horror (a style this series consistently counters), but it’s becoming like it structurally.
How ‘bout that police investigation? It is headed by returning (and previously unmentioned) character, Detective Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer, the non-Denise Richards from Starship Troopers). She’s our through-line. Our lead character, though, is Detective Eric Matthews, as played by “New Kid on the Block” Donnie Wahlberg in all his potato-shaped, lumpen anti-charisma. (The good Wahlberg is Mark.) Matthews is a reformed rogue cop, the sort who plays by his own rules and – ah, characterization by way of cliché, an efficient shorthand! For the moment, in any horror film’s most boring section, we learn of Matthews’ life. He’s divorced, and enduring a rocky relationship with equally unpleasant teenage son Danny (Erik Knudsen).
Now, Matthews is in the picture because ol’ Jigsaw left him a message at the site of Michael’s defacing: “Look closer, Detective Matthews.” Thus, by a Tappian means of examining Jigsaw’s latest video tape, Matthews is able to pinpoint Jiggy’s latest lair: yet another abandoned doll factory, which the city of Chicago is rife with. (I deduce Saw is set in Chicago by references to Joliet and certain street names – Ah, Jigsaw’s a local boy!) A SWAT team is assembled. A few trap-based fatalities later – which we’re not even supposed to think of as “murders,” since cinematic SWAT members are never quite humans – and Jigsaw has been cornered.
Well, this is a pretty unique turn of events – at least, by franchise standards – arrest your lead villain early in the second film! Of course, it is a smart move to focus on Jigsaw, AKA John Kramer (Tobin “Waiter from Tootsie” Bell), as his mystery was resolved at the end of Part One. (All horror villains must slowly become their series’ main character, and Jigsaw is ahead of the curve on that one.) Also, it allows for Matthews and Kramer to engage in a little cat and mouse game, with the victims of Jigsaw’s latest game hanging in the balance.
Now, all that was really the setup. Here’s the scenario for today: Waking up in a house are 7 career criminals. Also there is Donny, Matthew’s son. The house is flooding with sarin gas, which will kill them in 2 hours, because sarin works differently in the Saw universe than elsewhere – Hell, The Rock is closer to reality! And Matthews has been charged with simply chilling with the cancer-ridden Kramer for that two-hour duration – This, Kramer promises, is all Matthews must do to get his son back.
Over at the house, let’s meet our meat. Oh yes, by making Saw II a streamlined tale, without convenient random flashbacks to up the body count, we must go the survival horror route, and simply add plenty of disposable characters to the mix. These fools are distinguishable mostly by race and gender (one or two has a personality as well, but barely). It’s a symptom of many horror sequels. In the curious case of the Saw films, since Jigsaw always intends some transformative test for his subjects, there is rarely a truly identifiable person among these folks. They’re all just whores, skunk pussies, buggers, queens, fairies, dopers, junkies – OK, the whole Travis Bickle thing. Basically, all of Jigsaw’s victims are assholes. Let’s meet ‘em, shall we?
Donny, we already know.
Xavier (Franky G) – A Hispanic, prone to panic. Equivalently muscle-bound and idiotic.
Addison (Emmanuelle Vaugier) – Not just Hispanic, but a woman. And…that’s it, really.
Laura (Beverly Mitchell) – White. Female. And suffering prematurely from the sarin for incredibly unclear reasons.
Jonas (Glenn Plummer) – The token black man. That’s all the characteristic he needs!
Obi (Tim Burd) – A Russian. Apparently, he was involved in kidnapping all these other jerks for Jigsaw, and then himself victimized, and a less-clear variation on the Zep scenario from before.
Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) – Jigsaw’s lone survivor (what about Lawrence?!), whose presence in this latest test shall become less clear over time – Oh twist endings, how illogical you make everything before you.
Gus (Tony Nappo) – A white man, who doesn’t even get enough time to make the non-impression everyone else makes, because he promptly gets his stupid face shot off by the house’s first trap.
Okay, so in greater detail, here’s the situation for these “people.” The house is inescapable until after the Sarin Death Deadline, meaning they’ll all have to follow Jigsaw’s clues to find the antidotes strewn about the house. One is in a safe here in the main room, with the combo “in the back of your mind.” You know, Kramer (that is, Jigsaw) says to Matthews that his tests are a sort of Darwinian experiment to force these people to discover their true will to survive. I say it’s a test of their ability to solve arcane word jumble puzzles, because Jigsaw never exactly plays fair, except in the mind of Jigsaw. (Oh, and Amanda is the one to find Jigsaw’s tape explaining all this, even though its location – behind some random brick – in no way mirrors her former experience with the killer…More on this later.)
So, in Part One we had two dudes shackled in a restroom. That was a nicely minimalist situation, no matter how it was handled. Here, we have eight ill-defined ciphers, freely puttering all about a whole house. Another problem with sequel escalation is that is often kills what was most potent about the first – claustrophobia gives way to expansiveness. The result is it makes Jigsaw’s scheme for today seem sloppy in comparison, as more variables are added.
Of course, this house is escapable, if the jerks would all work together. They don’t. Specifically because of who Jigsaw chose, they fall to infighting – and that’s not even counting Xavier’s readiness to do everyone in with a nail-spiked baseball bat at first notice. Student of the human psyche that he claims to be (as well as student of nerve gasses, engineering, police procedure, fish entrails, etc.), Jigsaw really ought to know how ineffective his latest batch of lab rats will be.
Parallel to the house-based shenanigans, Kramer uses his time in Matthews’ company to express his statement of principles – to us, really, more than Matthews. As could be pieced together from Saw, but now expressed outright, Kramer thinks he’s doing people a charity, letting them enjoy the life that is so short for him. Flashbacks that are surprisingly appropriate (I know!) show the fallout of Kramer’s cancer diagnosis (under an off-screen Dr. Lawrence “Stumpy” Gordon). Now terminal, Kramer resolves to suicide. One unsuccessful car crash later, and Kramer sees the only logical response – to systematically kidnap, trap, and torture a series of lowlifes as part of an ill-founded examination of “the fabric of human nature.” It’s After School Special by way of Dr. Mengele. I’m fine with a skewed killer motive (it’s par for the horror course), but waaaay too many Saw faithful seem to swallow Kramer’s philosophizin’ with less salt than I use. Then again, people also think The Matrix was philosophically revolutionary, so there’s that.
Okay, I tire of Kramer’s semantics. What’s going on back in the house?...Well, Obi’s getting charred alive!
Okay, a little explanation. There was this oven, see, with two antidotes in it, see? One was for Obi, the other for his bestest pal (these traps seem designed for specific individuals, but with no way of ensuring that specific outcome – sloppy work, Jigsaw, old man). What Obi failed to notice, though, was the trip wire on his antidote. Of course, he could have self-injected inside the oven, but this setup demands more cleverness than it does “will to survive.” I take it John Kramer isn’t a huge fan of the scientific method.
We take a brief break to hear more of Kramer’s iffy mission statement, then it’s back to the house, and the following set piece. And indeed, it’s just a bunch of semi-connected set pieces now – a sure sign Saw is descending into the realms of body count horror it seemed so well primed to avoid. Now it’s Xavier’s test – to swim about in a pit full of hypodermic needles searching for a key. Yes, Jigsaw makes the old “needle in a haystack” joke in his taped preamble.
Of course, the problem with saying Xavier must do this is – What’s to prevent him from just shoving some other sap in? Nothing, really, seeing as Xavier does just that. So it’s Amanda who gets to take a hypodermic bath (what follows is the least disgusting image available).
Still, she finds the key, and – Oh right, I guess the key must be to something. Eh, to keep some door from closing. It closes anyway, being on a timer and all, except…this doesn’t seem to matter. So the plot goes on, with no more deaths and no more twists, one nasty sequence having played itself out. Good stuff.
Xavier was never the brightest of minds in the best of times, so with the final half hour left before scheduled death-by-sarin, he just goes about trying to open the antidote safe with his freakish muscles. This does not work. But then he notices something you’d think someone would’ve seen earlier – the backs of everyone’s necks are tattooed, all this adding up to the safe combination. So, now it’s just a simple matter of calmly and collectedly pooling resources, exchanging each other’s tattoos (“Dude!” “Sweet!”), and opening the safe…
That, or killing everybody. Xavier, Mensa reject that he is, thinks killing people is the only way to look at their necks – Xavier is stupid. Jonas is the first to go, because by 2005 you can at least guarantee a black man will survive half way through a horror movie.
Meanwhile, Laura has simply died from the sarin, because. If you didn’t have a gory set piece to off your useless character, you shouldn’t have a useless character…Of course, maybe it’s an 8-digit safe – hence 8 people. (Considering the Saw II DVD extras, I’d hazard that is the rare realm where these movies opt to be logical.)
Oh, and Addison’s a rather useless character too, right? Someone with no function in the climax, right? Correct. So she discovers an actual trap, a suspended glass box with an antidote inside. With characteristic lack of forethought, she just shoves both arms right in to retrieve it. Instead, she is caught dangling from a one-way razor portal, like a man with his hand stuck in a Pringles jar. We’re meant to conclude she’ll bleed to death, though I surmise the sarin will kill her first.
Xavier is now actively rampaging throughout the house, chasing around lone survivors Danny and Amanda. Matthews sees this from Kramer’s video screens, which sends him into an Xavier-ish paroxysm of rage and mindlessness. He thrashes Kramer all about, demanding the house’s address, when – Kelly and her cops use Technology to trace the video feed anyway. So they’re off to find the house. Meanwhile, Jigsaw is showing Matthews the “real” way there, by means of a secret elevator they’ve been standing in this whole time. Oh Kramer, you sneaky deviant.
Over in the house – Amanda has “discovered” a secret trap door under the safe in the main room, courtesy of the precise way Jonas’ blood is pooling. Off she and Danny go into a network of tunnels, Xavier in hot neck-pursuit, as they make their way to –
– that filthy, corpse-ridden restroom from Part One. Xavier looms when Amanda does something wildly unexpected: she uses logic. See, without her help, Xavier will never see the back of his own neck. But Xavier’s too clever for her, since he simply slices his neck off right then and there – what a maroon! So he closes in on Amanda anyway as –
– Danny slices the front of his (Xavier’s) neck wide open with a hacksaw – and we know those things are just lying all over the place, assuming we saw the first Saw (or its ads). So resolves the traditional portion of a Saw film; all that’s left is the denouement, which means an extraordinary plot twist stew. And you know what that means?
SPOILERS!
SPOILERS!
SPOILERS!
Kelly’s cops burst into the house to discover – a variation on the climactic Silence of the Lambs twist. That is, it’s the wrong house, simply a bank of prerecorded tapes playing out. For you see, the house nonsense already happened, long before the cop plot ever got started. Meaning…holy schnikeys, Saw II is more chronologically wacky than first appears! Every time we’d switch from Matthews to the house, we travelled through time! So…way to employ the same fragmented technique as Saw, but have your cake too.
(Meanwhile, a safe has opened in Jigsaw’s lair, revealing Danny safe inside it with an oxygen mask. So had Matthews simply stuck around…)
What’s that? You think that’s the great Saw II twist? Nah! There’s always two in this sort of thing – that was just the red herring plot twist. The real one comes up as Kramer leads Matthews deeper into a now-familiar series of tunnels. Soon Matthews himself is in the familiar gross restroom, a tape waiting for him. But it is not Kramer’s voice on it, but Amanda’s…
She recounts a great editing defecation of flashbacks, not Matthews’ flashbacks, but non-diagetic for our purpose, explaining the Twist. She is Kramer’s protégé. Our terminal cancer patient needs someone to perpetuate his good work (and franchise) once he’s dead, so way to stack your cards for a series here. Apparently, Amanda came under Kramer’s wing in her own suicide attempt following her encounter in Part One – I don’t even want to parse out how her initial rejection of Jigsaw’s “salvation” plays into the series’ wonky code of ethics. Rather, let’s just say Matthews is Amanda’s “first test subject,” something he himself learns as she seals him in to die. “Game over,” not quite as soul-wracking when said in Amanda’s voice.
Climactic plot twists are tricky, because they change the meaning of everything that’s come before. Done well, and new interpretations arise. Done poorly, and things just grow confused. Saw II falls into the latter sphere, with Amanda’s whole role in the house becoming suspect. She’s obviously a ringer, there to influence the course of events – which seems antithetical to Kramer’s supposed desire for a good experiment. Then there’s the whole Xavier thing – Did Amanda (and/or Jigsaw) not know the threat he posed? I mean, a needle bath surely couldn’t be part of her plan. And all this to put Danny in faux-harm (necessitating his murder of a roided-out psychopath) in order to coax Matthews into the restroom…Yyyyeahhh… (See? Too many leaps of faith to make it work.)
Well, I saw Saw, and I saw Saw II too. I seesaw whether one should see Saw I as the one and only Saw to see. Saw’s draws don’t withdraw the flaws, ‘cause I pause in Saw’s claws.
I had to get that off my chest. But really, Saw II exhibits the same issue which plagues most sequels. It is a structural and technical improvement on its forebear, inane and essential twist aside, yet it cannot escape from Part One’s shadow. For one, there is a subservience to style and tone which prevents Saw II, and most sequels, from working on their own. And there is the lack of discovery this time around, rendering everything a bit less exciting than before. And I find myself surprisingly apathetic to the power of the Saw series. I had expected one of two reactions by this stage. I thought either A) I’d be morally outraged at the films’ evil, or B) I’d be cheering them on from the perspective of an ethically-blind horror fan. Neither has happened, leaving me to consider the series so far a mediocrity – one with a disproportionate backlash and sequel catalogue. But we’ll see where this stuff goes.
Related posts:
• No. 1 Saw (2004)
• No. 3 Saw III (2006)
• No. 4 Saw IV (2007)
• No. 5 Saw V (2008)
• No. 6 Saw VI (2009)
• No. 7 Saw 3D (2010)
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