"Saw" it once. "Saw" it "Twice"

Rating: 7/10 (22 November 2005)

Not nearly as brilliant as its predecessor "Saw II" forgets about the strongest reason why the first one worked so well. It was a devilish cocktail of a great plot with many turns and thrills, solid acting, impressive cinematography and most of all, psychotic frightful tests Jigsaw made his "patients" go through. "Saw II" feels a bit off from this, trying hard to maintain and even surpass the level of "Saw", but the bar the latter set is surprisingly high and although this movies mainly sticks to the same formula (it was even made for peanuts of a budget like the first one) the intensity and originality are GONE!!! No doubt this is because a different director took over, which is NEVER good with successful movies-I will die of shock when a sequel not made by the same director as the original is better.
"Saw II" holds on fairly strong (especially considering the above statement), but the characterization of the "test subjects" (for the lack of a better word/expression) is nowhere to be found. This, later on in the movie, doesn't prove to be a wise choice because I just couldn't care less who would make it out alive-compared to the original where I broke a sweat before Cary Elwes even started tightening his shirt above his ankle. I will applaud the plot, and the way it's going to progress into another sequel, but somebody lost all the imagination that made the "tests" in the first one so chilling to watch. That was the best part, damn it! Overall, "Saw II" feels as if I've already seen all of this before somewhere and that's what makes it fail as a sequel. The cast doesn't stand out (which it probably even shouldn't, but their performances are weaker than not), Beverly Mitchell just feels all-the-way wrong among them going for that "don't want to be type-cast" thing, and Jigsaw could have had a script worthy of his screen presence to enlighten us with his fu...d-up philosophy of appreciating life.
7/10-Appreciated the plot unraveling, thought the rest was weaker than in the original.