Those Who Make Sequels Don't Deserve Life

Rating: 5/10 (5 November 2005)

Let's start by saying what this movie did have, that will take a lot less time. Gore check. Creepy puppet and various devices used to permanently dismantle people's craniums check. Pasty cancer victim forcing the "unworthy" to develop some want to survive check. Alright, now that that's done I can move on to other, more pressing issues.
I know that everybody, myself included, simply adored the twist ending to the first Saw. Finally learning that the "dead" guy who'd been lying in a pool of his own blood for the entire movie wasn't really dead and was in fact an ingenious, if not twisted as hell, cancer victim striving to show people the value of their meaningless lives was a treasured moment in horror movie history. I can't say much about its staying power in the minds of the general public I will always remember watching that body rise from the floor of that bathroom.
Of course the producers couldn't just reenact the twist from the first one, they had to take it a step farther, keep people guessing. So how do you top a twist as well developed and well executed as the one in Saw? If you take a hint from Saw II I guess the answer is to make the ending so ridiculously contrived that nobody would ever dream of guessing it for fear of feeling stupid even in their own mind. Though I'm sure the girl who played Amanda was thrilled to get her second major acting gig reviving the heroine-addict she so briefly portrayed in the first Saw, I didn't appreciate her reappearance quite so much. It was completely pointless to bring her back; she was useless in the first movie and even more useless in this one. When you get right down to it they used her presence as out: this way they could kill off our friend the cancer victim and still keep the series going. At least we can sleep easy knowing "Amanda" won't soon be out of work.
Unfortunately, the real sin in the writing here is that they simply took it too far. All they had to do was leave it with the SWAT team figuring out that the whole thing was staged and that the kid was really in a "safe" place. That would have been more than enough for me. Also, I could have done without Beverley Mitchell crying constantly, but they couldn't have cast the part better. A decade of complaining on 7th Heaven made her the perfect choice for the part.
The one redeemable quality of this film is the thing that made the first one: a truly original and inventive antagonist. This guy ranks up there with Hannibal and John Doe of Seven on my list of awesome villains. This is where the writers showed their true prowess. They managed to do what is rare these days: they created a powerfully psychopathic serial killer that had a defendable philosophy. "Those who don't value life don't deserve life." It sounds cruel, but there is some part in all of us that has to agree with the sentiment if not the deeds carried out in its name. It bothers me that he claims never to have killed anyone because it seems to me that putting people into a situation where they will almost certainly perish and offering them only a slim chance for survival is grounds for a murder charge. I know what he means, but that one statement is the only stupid thing that he says and he continues to say it despite the glaring error in it. That fact aside, this guy continues to impress me. He outsmarts everybody. The beauty in his strategy is that he tells everybody exactly what they need to know in order to walk out of their given situation entirely intact. He just banks on the fact that people never change and they, when put under immense stress, default to their baser instincts instead of taking a second to think the situation out rationally. The sad truth about humankind is that he will never be disappointed.
Overall I enjoyed the movie, but I had pretty low expectations to begin with. I expected exactly what I got: a solid villain and an hour and a half of gratuitous violence and blood. If you're looking for a great piece of cinematography you're going to be sorely upset with what you see; you'll probably be a little motion-sick by the end too. Bring your sense of humor and check your upchuck reflex at the door, especially if you are sensitive about the use of scalpels on eyeballs.