Plodding, but effective continuation

Rating: 5/10 (25 June 2015)

Well, Amanda (Shawnee Smith) returns and gets thrown into a pit of syringes, Donnie Wahlberg joins the fray as a corrupt cop, and Lucy Camden (you watched that show, admit it) has become a convicted criminal in this plodding continuation of the Saw franchise.
For those who came in late, this movie series is based on a serial killer (and in spite of his protests, yep, he IS a killer) who uses his skills as a civil engineer to try and teach people life lessons by putting them in traps that will kill them if they can't escape in time. We find out in the first film that this serial killer John Kramer, dubbed 'Jigsaw' by the media, is a man dying of cancer. We also see a drug addict named Amanda who is able to solve one of his deadly puzzles. To recap my own misgivings with the film, which I liked, Jigsaw IS a murderer and his traps are inconsistent in intent. In what would become a tradition in Saw films, this one starts with a trap. Some guy has to cut his eye out to retrieve a key that will release him from a deadly mask. He can't do it and dies. Turns out the guy was a police informant working for Detective Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) a New Kid on the Block (oh, you just try not to use that pun) in the Saw series, who receives a phone call to come down to a warehouse where they have found Kramer. in Kramer's lair they don't find his diorama from the original but do notice (I'll go on record right now as saying the cops in the Saw series are, generally speaking, the most inept and unobservant police officers ever put to film) some huge TV screens showing 8 people in a house. Amongst the group are Amanda, (at this stage we are told she is Jigsaw's only Survivor but by the last film I think they've forgotten all about this and plenty of people have survived his traps), and Detective Matthew's son Daniel. In the house is a nerve gas that will kill them all in two hours, with various antidotes hidden around the house. In the meantime Matthews is asked to play a game: talk to Jigsaw for the next two hours and his son will be safe.
The film goes back and forth between the house and the mind game between Kramer and Matthews as we learn that everyone in the house, apart from Daniel, is a con who was put away on doctored evidence by Matthews. We get to see these cons get burned alive, bled dry, thrown into syringe pits and run around like maniacs trying to kill each other. With his son in peril, Matthews eventually loses it and starts whaling on Kramer and forces him to take him to the house where all this is happening.
Spoilers!: upon reaching the house, Matthews learns that it is the house from the original Saw film, with Adam's dead body still in the basement. He also learns that the footage he was watching, and we were seeing, had all happened earlier and he had been watching a recording. His son was out of the house, locked in a safe that opened once the two hours expired. We also find out Amanda has been working with Jigsaw, and has essentially become his apprentice. At the end she chains up Matthews in the same room the original film started in and says "Game Over" as she slams the door shut, but doesn't lock it, a fact that would become important in the later films. I must admit this movie got me twice, I wasn't expecting the taped footage, or Amanda being a nutcase, though I probably should have as I'd seen Shawnee Smith in Becker.
The kills in this are more elaborate than the previous film, in typical sequel style they've upped the death count and number of lives in peril. As is often the case though this is done to the detriment of character development and story. We never really learn properly what some of these cons are supposed to have done, and with the exception of Daniel and perhaps Amanda, we are given no reason to care if they survive or not. I thought the twists worked better here than the original, in the sense they weren't as dumb. I was unimpressed with the veteran actors in the first film, I thought only Tobin Bell as Jigsaw really did himself much credit here. Donnie isn't a bad actor, and as we've seen in Blue Bloods, his deficiencies are easy to hide in an ensemble, but he's not given much to work with either. Shawnee Smith does alright as Amanda. All the rest I can take or leave.
Saw II seems to make more sense than many films in the series, particularly the later ones, but the pacing is slow and the characters not likable. They try and compensate for this by having some creative kills at regular intervals, but it still left me a little cold and a bit bored. Effective in what it set out to do, but the third installment really needed to pick it up. Could they find a good veteran actor, characters the audience could engage with, an effective mix between an elaborate game with grisly traps and true character development; and a genuinely unsettling twist for the third part? You won't believe how close they came...