Worth watching, though lacks the intensity of the first

Rating: 6/10 (24 August 2006)

Saw II is certainly worth a couple of hours of your life, but you will come away with a sense of "been there, done that. bought the t shirt already." Yes it has a couple of novel new and horrid ways of killing/ torturing people but all in all it is a retread, and not necessarily of the first Saw film alone. The group dynamic, in needing to solve puzzles to escape with their lives, is very reminiscent of Cube, a much tighter thriller in my opinion, perhaps only because it never cuts away from the central action- there is no let up.
The vast majority of the characters in the house remain cardboard cut outs- we don't really see beyond their criminal activities. So we have "the ex junkie" "the drug dealer" "the prostitute" but you'll be surprised if you remember their names, or anything else that made them distinctive. Perhaps this is deliberate- you get the various guilty pleasure of watching them die in numerous ways without really caring for them as people, but in reality it removes a sense of intensity and tension which I found in the first Saw movie. We actually care about the doctor in that film.
The character of Jigsaw/ John is demystified here also as we get to see too much of him. He lacks the presence of, say, Anthony Hopkin's Hannibal Lecter so it feels as if the more we see of him the less impact he has, the less fearsome he appears, though at the same time it isn't as if these feelings are replaced with sympathy or pity. He's just there.
I won't say too much about the twist (well twists I guess) at the end, other than they felt silly, whereas I remember my stomach lurching when the final twist in the original film was released. I'm a bit concerned about Saw 3 and the direction one of the twists implies it will take the series. I'm not sure if I can take it as seriously- it feels more like a vehicle for extending the longevity of the film series, rather than something that is important in terms of plot. Time will tell I guess!
To summarise, it is worth a rent, perhaps a blind purchase if you're a big fan of the first or a completist. It certainly isn't an atrocious sequel, but it does feel a little paint-by-numbers detective/serial killer/ horror at times. It's a fun way to pass a couple of hours though, and I certainly didn't find myself bored, though perhaps a little less involved than in the first film.