Unremitting Twaddle

Rating: 3/10 (27 October 2008)

I didn't see the original of what has now become an apparently endless franchise. But I caught 'Saw 2' on the telly recently and was about as disenchanted with it as I more or less expected to be.
A bunch of typical boring young farts who you couldn't give a rap about and who've been providing slasher-fodder ever since Freddie Kruger went into glove-making, find themselves collectively imprisoned in a sort of death-trap maze affair by a raving loony, believe it or not. Yes; that's how desperate entertainment has become these days.
This loony - who is apparently dying from cancer (though, sadly, not quick enough) is in police custody and they are able to watch the desperate antics of those boring young farts on his video link. He won't tell them where they are. And what's more; one of the kids is one of the cops' son. Yep; I mean it.
So, there are two stories in one. The loony and the cops engaged in a sort of hammy Lecter/Starling stand-off, whilst the brats get winnowed down by nasty traps. The movie cuts from one to the other with the most inept and untimely editing. It's very difficult to engage with the characters of either sequence because just as we begin to, we are unexpectedly jerked out of one scenario into the other, breaking the continuity and destroying the spell. Not that there is much in the way of engaging characterisation anyway.
Acting is about as wooden and contrived as one has come to expect from this kind of twaddle. And the script is positively asinine.
There isn't much left to hold the attention after that lot.
Oh - and I forgot to mention; all the brats have been infected with some kind of deadly nerve agent for which they must find the antidote. As I said; it's unremitting.
The traps are as predictable as page three. Some noddy puts his eye to an eye-hole. And as sure as sure you know he's going to get it poked. This time by a 45 calibre. Another dummy climbs into a small furnace to get some antidote. You can see it coming a mile away. The door bangs shut and he gets roasted alive. This despite the fact that a riddle specifically warned him he might finish-up in hell. Later, one of the bimbettes puts her hands through a trap that is so obviously intended to sever blood-vessels in the wrist that - by now - you begin to realise that the loony's IQ is scarcely higher than his subjects. He just has an amazing prowess in demented DIY. Not long after this there was an advertisement break, and it seemed as good a reason as any to call it quits.
Did I miss out on a spectacular and rewarding denouement? I'm sure of it.
The ongoing franchise and the encomiums of praise on this website testify to a growing section of our society for whom the best that can be said is that they are a sign of the times. One suspects them of being the sort of people who tyrannise their fellow siblings into suicide, or torture their pets out of academic interest. You sure wouldn't want 'em as baby-sitters.
Unredeemed by any cinematic virtue.