Far superior to the average original

Rating: 8/10 (3 February 2006)

Gory horror suspense mystery race against time movie does everything right which its predecessor got wrong.
Saw II is a direct follow up to the overrated original which featured a psychotic maniacal serial killer who set up traps for his victims to fall into. They could get out of them, but at a huge personal cost.
Saw II reveals the killer after the original very much kept him as a hidden figure, and places him right in front of the cops who've tracked him down after he purposefully left a clue to his whereabouts on his latest victim's body. Once the cops find him they discover to their horror that he appears to have set up another trap, this time involving someone close to the main cop.
The rest of the movie is a race against time to find the location of the latest trap and save the day.
This being Saw, however, nothing is as it appears and twists and turns rule the roost.
It's fair to say this is a much more satisfying movie than the first one was. The acting is acceptable enough without being Oscar standard, but particularly from Jigsaw (The bad guy) it has a nice sinister and dark edge to it. Everyone is suitably stressed out and while there is a stereotype or two in the mix, the characters are generally pretty good and reasonably well thought out.
The direction is really excellent, so good in fact it's completely un-noticeable. The movie flows at a superb pace and never bores for a second. The cinematography isn't really the name of the game in a movie like this, such is its claustrophobic indoor nature.
However, what *is* the name of the game is gore. Well, not so much gore as pain. Saw devised ingenious ways of depicting how painful death could be. The various traps portrayed yet crueler ways of hurting a victim, and of murdering them in the most repugnant and toe curling ways.
Well Saw II takes this further and has many sequences to make your skin crawl - the level of agony shown is quite disturbing at times. It goes without saying horror fans will be in their element with the sheer imagination on show in this one.
Add to that the all round helplessness and general despair on offer, and you have a pretty smart movie with lashings of dark overtones.
Very good and recommended. But you do need to have fairly strong resilience to the content.