“Saw is akin to The Blair Witch Project in that after opening weekend, an influx of people, upon realizing everyone else was hailing the film, turned against the tide and started to renounce it. I was there (for both), I saw it all (no pun intended). After about a week, I heard discreet whispers of dissent regarding the ending which such people had figured out before the film started (in the wake of the entire audience’s vocal disarray once the killer’s identity was disclosed) and that they had been bored with the movie. I sighed, chuckled, and waited . . . . I waited until a year later and mockingly nodded at the same nay-sayers as they walked into the theater to see Saw II opening night.”
To my previous sentiments expressed in my review of James Wan’s surprise blockbuster, I add: “Told ya’ so!” atop the notification that, sadly, those detractors who did return, albeit ironically given one of the film’s themes, adhered to the genre trademark that a sequel automatically suffers from the law of diminishing returns thus, such individuals used the opportunity to not only reaffirm how rote and mundane the original was, ergo how smart and cinematically astute they are, but did so while passing premature judgment upon a film prior to the opening frame based on general genre principle.
To such people I state, God, you must be feeling a bit hypocritical after everything was said and done but, then again, such people are not typically those which can appreciate, or even comprehend, the underlying philosophizes contained in a work of art so, sigh, Darren Lynn Bousman’s Saw II is relegated to being an in-joke for you and me [insert finger on side of nose and a knowing nod].
However, humbly I will admit that my initial viewing of the feature was not favorable but, fortunately, one of the great facets of being a movie critic is being permitted to review a work which, on the odd blue moon, yields many surprises. Such is the case with the sequel to Saw.
Five years after the initial round of slayings by the mysterious Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), another puzzle victim is found (Noam Jenkins), which leads homicide detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) to the killer’s lair. Unfortunately, Jigsaw has set in place yet another series of life-or-death riddles, including an undisclosed locale with a live feed of eight individuals, one of which is the Detective’s son, Daniel (Erik Knudsen).
Upon my vestal viewing of Bousman’s film, I was quite dissatisfied with the fact that Jigsaw’s “testing the fabric of human nature” via a puzzle took place in a setting extremely reminiscent of Vincenzo Natali’s phenomenal but little known 1997 film, Cube. I am not one who takes kindly to the exploitation of an audience’s ignorance. As such, as with Natali’s feature, we are cast in a house with various rooms which contain deathtraps. What’s more, the rooms are color-coded, just as they are in Cube. Secondly, the opening puzzle involves Michael, who is locked in a “Venus Headtrap,” which hits a bit too close to home and auto plagiarism by way of the selected torture device, a reverse bear trap, of the sole survivor in Part I. Next, though continuing the homage to the Italian director from the original, we have yet another reference to Dario Argento, this time a literal Xerox of one of the Master’s own deathtraps, a rigged gun mounted to the eyehole and lock of a door. Fourthly, the filmmakers set a portion of the film in a house, which subsequently dissipates the claustrophobia whereas, in the original, a secured room or enclosure aided a scene’s claustrophobic tension. Lastly, and perhaps most irritatingly, is John Kramer, a.k.a. Jigsaw, who is not only revealed and shown to be literally human, but such is enacted early into the film, thus depleting part of the ethical essence of his “work” in that, in so doing, literal recognition will undoubtedly be forthcoming for the mastermind and, as such, hubris will more than likely overshadow the content of his actions.
So what’s to like about the film?
Beginning with my last grievance, I realized after my second viewing that Jigsaw’s foiled anonymity is intended to lead us to the theme of hubris for such is consequently developed and juxtaposed to what is arguably the main theme behind the work, hubris’s conflict with altruism. This also ingeniously accounts for and legitimizes the horror sin of the filmmakers focusing upon the deaths within the film instead of the development of the various characters and their respective plights and histories. Each and every time someone dies, it is a result of hubris superceding the group’s potential altruistic efforts. Each and every one of the death traps could have been easy and successfully solved if the group would have worked together. The “testing the fabric of human nature” indeed, which brings me to yet another aspect of the work which I, along with several other critics, found fault: the filmmakers’ choice of potential victims.
In the original, Wan’s film highlighted the fact that the average person, though spiffy-clean in appearance, is not necessarily ethically pure inside. However, in Bousman’s film, we are host to a gaggle of criminals, thus making for a very conservative outing (an odd move considering the genre’s demographic) as we anticipate those devoid of social value getting theirs in the end. Yet, cleverly, no sooner had I posited such a reading a second time did the director usurp my interpretation by revealing that the figurehead of justice and righteousness, albeit with a bit of a short fuse, was the Christ figure of corruption himself, which simultaneously absolved the evil doers of moments before. Hence, the director forces retrospective judgment as he demands his audience retract its wake of concern for the illicit and, subsequently, vehemently condemn the now-hypocritical, before he proceeds to upset the remainder of our naïve expectations.
So, with so much cinematic girth cunningly veiled as sequel schlock (as only Jigsaw would have it), it should come as no surprise that the director fully exploits our common fears including Ommatophobia (Fulcian eye phobia), being burned alive, needles and infection thereby, while positing witty foreshadowing and parallelism with the aforementioned turn-around of the moral status of our kidnapped collective amid presenting a false narrator of sorts by film’s end.
I every so graciously and humbly commend Darren Lynn Bousman and his very manipulative, clever follow up to Saw, Saw II. Not only does form follow function to such a succinct degree that it is thoroughly deceptive upon first viewing, but the feature manages to not only sustain the impetus and weight of its predecessor, but it further explores the philosophic ramifications of the ethics behind Jigsaw’s games, only this time through a sociological lens. Wow. Considering the large number of negative reviews of the feature, undoubtedly for some of the very reasons which left a bad taste in my mouth during my initial viewing, perhaps more critics should take the time to give Saw II another glance.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
