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Saw II (Frank's Take)
01/12/2005 . Source: Frank Ochieng 
It's quite interesting to see how fast the filmmakers decided to whip up another grisly instalment of Saw, says Frank, after only a mere year of making the raw rounds just around Halloween 2004. Well, things apparently haven't changed THAT much since Saw II wants to desperately emulate its predecessor by accomplishing a few similar feats. Buy Saw II in the USA - or Buy Saw II in the UK  For starters, its timely release was slated for Halloween 2005 while hoping to capture the ghoulish sentiments of the spooky season. Secondly, Saw II looks to pour on more of the same insipid and insane gross-out sequences that gave an intentional hideous face to its original inspiration. However, the raucous results are familiarly conclusive-Saw II is a shameless spectacle of squirming and squealing without maintaining much solid suspense in its warped, blood-clotting heart.
Director/co-writer Darren Lynn Bousman patches together a sluggish serial killer flick that merely goes through the motions with its arbitrary shock value tendencies. Although James Wan's Saw was outrageously disjointed in the sensationalistic "yuck" department, Bousman feels even more liberated to overflow his follow-up nauseating narrative with over-the-top menacing manoeuvres that come off as being repetitive and laboured.
Sure, Saw II will probably challenge the sick-minded imaginations of slice-and-dice enthusiasts who appreciate their goose bump sagas as twisted as they can be. However, Bousman's overbearing scarefest was conveniently slapped into one monstrous piece with all the nonchalant effort of making a salami sandwich on rye. Although Saw II over-indulges in its quest for exaggerated cheap thrills and chills, this severed session is nothing more than a slight boofest chomping off more than it can chew.
The ever-so perverse and pesky Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is back in action and looking forward to splattering his victims courtesy of his self-serving morbid head games. As with a majority of the cinema's frightening fiends, Jigsaw harbours a misguided morality in the way he deals with his sacrificial pawns. In fact, a sinister figure such as Jigsaw is above the ordinary manner in which he chooses to dispatch his petrified prey. Instead, there's always a sophisticated and elaborate way to punish his detractors. And amusingly, the audience nine times out of ten find themselves rooting for a creepy cut-up such as Jigsaw because…let's face it…what sympathy should we have for the clueless crowd that are routinely trapped in these ridiculously cruel-minded capers.
This time around, the demented Jigsaw takes pleasure in corralling a bunch of personalities-eight random drug dealers (Franky G's Xavier) and addicts, ex-cons, a cop's teenaged kid (Erik Knudson), and even a former elusive Jigsaw target in Amanda (Shawnee Smith reprising her role from the first film). His agenda: let them run loose around a dangerously booby-trapped house while trying to avoid all sorts of punishing and piercing objects.
Also, Jigsaw is quite inventive in the presentation of head-scratching puzzles that his perished participants are to solve if they want to avoid their deadly fate. Thrown into the mix of Jigsaw's House of Pain are enticing items such as lethal nerve agents, stacks of syringes, loose flesh samples, rigged doors, rivers of blood, and miscellaneous body parts hanging around as if they're waiting to hail a taxi cab.
Of course we learn that Jigsaw is gravely ill and is actually deemed vulnerable. But to compensate for his shortcomings, Jigsaw proudly embraces his hatred for an embittered cop named Eric Mason (Donnie Wahlberg). Domestic and professional issues have hampered Mason, whose son is one of Jigsaw's housebound prisoners. Nevertheless, Mason is taunted by Jigsaw and has been allowed to monitor the ruthless rogue and his locked-up "playthings". Granted Mason is invited to match wits with Jigsaw in terms of rescuing the reluctant roommates. But first, the weary detective must be subjected to this maniac's self-absorbed take on life's perceptions and accept the method behind the pending madness.
The movie's motto is easily "let's score for gore" and Bousman (along with fellow screenwriter Leigh Whannell) do their part to appease in this aspect. Saw II is capable when considering the relentless rigors of featuring nonsensical and numbing twists and turns with overdone scare tactics for good measure. But the direction is woefully suspect in this murky production and the peculiar camera angles try to awkwardly conjure up a tension-filled reaction that's never fully realized. The performances are stilted and hammy and the dialogue has all the meaty expectations of a high school anatomy class skeleton. The movie wants to be bold, brash and bizarre but the cheesy proceedings fail to lend any spice to a rancid flick that's run its corrosive course.
As a villainous force, the Jigsaw Killer could have been a calculating cad to be reckoned with thanks to his sadistic ingenuity. Unfortunately, the thinly veiled mundane material and the transparent characterizations in peril are not in sync with the hardcore nastiness of the film's flesh-loving philosopher of torture. Without the surrounding particulars to give distinctive colour to Jigsaw's blood-thirsty rage, he's just another faceless, slaughtering simpleton looking to bask in the ominous cinematic shadows of Friday the 13th's Jason Voorheeves or Nightmare on Elm Street's Freddy Krueger.
In the long run, anyone can make a grim and grotesque sideshow at will. Whenever there's a crafty scarefest spilling its guts at being clever in its creepiness, that's something to joyously lose your lunch over.
Frank Ochieng
(c) Frank Ochieng 2005
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