'Saw II' was shot in a mere 25 days and retains all the gory glory of last year's original, but remains in a league of horror movies that will never overcome its grand master'David Finchner's 1995 thriller of intelligence, 'Seven.'
However, this does not mean it will not scare the pants off of audiences everywhere. While things may have been rushed to ensure a promising Halloween release, 'Saw II,' once one looks past the sub-par, overly aggressive performance of New Kid on the Block Donnie Wahlberg, is grisly, suspenseful and incredibly scary.
In 'Saw II,' Jigsaw'our mechanical genius and master of hiding keys inside of his victims' body parts'has struck again. Only this time, he's done it by incarcerating several people in a fortress-like house complete with boobytraps and bloody tasks. These tasks must be completed before inhaling too much of the deadly nerve gas circulating through the air vents, which will essentially cause their internal organs to explode from the inside and drown them in their own blood.
Wahlberg plays Detective Eric Mason, a man of unbearable aggression, and the father to one of the detainees of Jigsaw's little game. Jigsaw lures Detective Mason to his lair by way of one of his previous victims, and the identity of our crazy, old killer is revealed.
A lot of the appeal of the original 'Saw' lay in its unique element of mystery. A scary dude in a mask is telling you to saw your own leg off or to cut into some living guy's stomach. The sequel takes an entirely different approach.
'Saw II' reveals the secrets laid out by its predecessor and lets the audience do with them as they may until the entire film careens into a brick wall with a clever, unforeseen twist of events. 'Saw II' is not as good as 'Saw,' simply because it takes the mystery out. It does what a lot of sequels should not do'it makes it difficult to watch the first film without having some prevailing bias toward the outcome.
Some audiences may not agree with this, as 'Saw II' really is an entirely separate movie from 'Saw,' and quite frankly, 'Saw II' does measure up. While it may not be as gory or mysterious as its prequel, it is a masterpiece of suspense and fear. Even with a little bit of dialogue that is laugh-out-loud ridiculous, it's no 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre,' but it's still scary.
'Saw II' will keep the following that 'Saw' established just one year ago, but it won't impress them to the extent that its predecessor did. 'Saw' laid out the groundwork for a fabulous feat in gory special effects and a villain so terrifying that just a breath of his voice had his victims screaming and breathing hard with agonizing fear. The sequel is a decent horror film. Just do not go in expecting the gravity of a twist like that in 'Seven.' Genius like that is hard to overcome.
