A predictably bad sequel made with only money in mind.

Rating: 1/10 (4 March 2006)

While the first "Saw" had its problems, it nevertheless made a genuine attempt to break away from the mindless teen-oriented junk that has pretty much come to represent (and ultimately ruin) what passes for a horror movie these days. "Saw 2" was exactly what it tried to hype itself as not being: contrived, unoriginal, poorly directed, badly written, terrible acting and worst of all, dumbed-down and rushed out to theaters to cash in on the first installment.
This movie is totally devoid of energy from the opening sequence to the last minute (where it copies the exact ending of the first "Saw" so that we can have a "Saw 3"). There are any number of puzzles left unsolved by the end of this lame sequel, but none so glaring and infuriating as the business with the numbers on the back of the necks of the characters that you can't bring yourselves to care about. A fair amount of screen time is taken up by this matter and then the significance of it just vanishes into thin air. Also, let's not ignore Jigsaw's advice in the matter of the "furnace" killing: "If you're in Hell only the Devil can get you out" (or something like that). While the fool who climbs into the furnace in the first place is burning up, there's a brief shot of the interior wall of the furnace where a graphic illustration of the Devil is seen painted on the wall, pointing to a small handle marked "TURN". This is never explained or followed up.
None of the tension created in the first "Saw" is apparent here at all. Not once are you ever convinced that the motley crew of people "trapped" in the house are really trapped. You can get more suspense by dragging out your old copy of the boardgame "Clue" and playing that. This sequel was only another money-making shill for everyone connected with it..and can we please have an end to "the making of..(enter movie name here)" featureless that plague cable movie channels? I'd seen the hype documentary on "Saw 2" so many times before actually seeing the movie that knowing how everything was done effects-wise etc. (not that it was rocket science to begin with) that the whole movie had already been telegraphed and therefore, no surprise.
This might have been something good, built on an original idea but as usual, Hollywood goes for the cash and assumes the people who buy the tickets won't recognize trash when they see it.
One star is here is being overly generous.