Brutality and boredom. A can't-miss combination!

Rating: 5/10 (27 November 2005)

The "Saw" movies are alternately quite clever and very distressing. Taken together, they constitute an endurance test of brutality. These films challenge us not to look away at least once. So it's no surprise, for those versed in the first installment, when the various expendables of "Saw II" start digging into their own flesh, climbing into industrial ovens, and inadvertently shooting themselves in the face. These things sometimes can't be avoided.
The hook of "Saw II," like its predecessor, is a neat trick. The victims of Jigsaw, evil mastermind extraordinaire, are given legitimate  albeit gruesome  means of escape. Likewise, the police have the keys to these deadly puzzles right in front of them, if only they knew where to look. This time, Jigsaw is captured early on, in what seems to be a suspiciously easy fashion. Sure enough, he's arranged things so that he's calling the shots, even from police custody. He's rigged a series of monitors showing Detective Eric Matthews' (Donnie Wahlberg) son trapped, with 5 or 6 others, in a house that is to a normal abode what a roach motel is to the real thing. They're slowly being poisoned, and must navigate the house to find the antidote before they start to bleed from places they shouldn't.
As in the first "Saw," the film depends on an essentially omnipotent villain. This seems unfair; since we're dealing with god, it's a given that everyone in his clutches will be killed, horribly maimed, or otherwise put at his mercy exactly as planned. The "thrills" of "Saw II," if that's the appropriate term, come not from discovering whether these people will be disgustingly done in, but simply how. That leaves us with an ultra-graphic peepshow that exists for its own sake. It's morbid fascination taken to seriously grisly extremes.
Both these films are extraordinarily aggressive. They're far less interested in suspense than in making us squirm. The result are some lengthy, boring sequences of chatter between scenes of people getting offed in various death traps. There's little incentive to care about anyone when their ultimate fates are all but certain. As creative as these murder machines are (and they are creative, if you're into that sort of thing), they almost always depend upon impossible anticipation of character behavior and superhuman timing. "Saw II" comes with a nifty little twist at the end. I guess it works as much as anything else in the movie, but the body of the film gives viewers no conceivable opportunity to work it out themselves. All the characters here are given the tools they need, if only they can figure out how to use them, but the movie doesn't give us the same benefit. "Saw II" happens to us, rather than engaging us. With no stake in the outcome, we're turned into mere voyeurs. But the escape for audiences is hidden in plain sight as if it were one of Jigsaw's traps. It's at the back of the theater, and has a red "EXIT" sign over it.