The true torture here is boredom

Rating: 2/10 (27 August 2007)

I know IMDb ratings mean relatively little. But 6,9 as the average rating of Saw 2? You got to be kidding me.
I imagined this would be bad, but I wasn't prepared for a *boring* bad movie. This is not a bloodbath, it's a snooze fest. With the exception of a couple of scenes, it's not THAT gory for the genre - certainly not for squeamish viewers, but not the kind of "oh so terrible" slaughterhouse described by the hype. It's more unpleasant and lugubrious than shocking.
A bunch of cookie-cutter characters run around a maze, and every ten minutes one of them dies; meanwhile, a detective (Donnie Wahlberg) confronts the Jigsaw killer (Tobin). It's basically a thriller version of The Cube (which wasn't that great in the first place).
Characters are uniformly unlikeable and boring; of course, there is the mandatory psycho stalker who starts murdering his companions because... well, no reason at all. He is eeeeeeeeeeeeevil, and that's it. Talk about contrived conflict.
Wahlberg and Tobin are decent as the cop and the killer - their short scenes are far more intriguing than all events inside the maze - but apart for their performances, this stuff is just meh.
2/10