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A few thoughts on Saw I, since I never did
write a review for that: It was good. Not great,
and absolutely flawed. And the flaw was big. The
flaw was the bad combination of editing and writing not
matching. The screenplay had obviously been
constructed lead the viewer astray, lead him into thinking
that certain characters were the bad guy when they weren't.
Fine, standard fare, I can dig it. HOWEVER, in the
editing room, the director made the decision to mangle up
the continuity, for the obvious purpose of keeping us
guessing. Fine, standard fare, I can dig it... UNLESS,
the combination of these two techniques form in such a way
to make one undo the other, which is what happened.
For the entire movie I kept wondering why the filmmakers
were trying to convince me that the bad guy was someone they
had already shown me it couldn't be! A very amateur
mistake, and while it didn't ruin the film for me, it
certainly kept me from totally losing myself in it. In
the end, I decided that Saw was better than 90% of the other
crap coming out and that I'd enjoyed seeing some relatively
original material on the big screen in a horror flick that
wasn't completely generic. So, Saw II.
A vast improvement. Saw II is moderately scary, nicely
creepy, and pretty damn gross. If these things don't
get your rocks off, don't go. But damn is it good.
Again, not stupendous and not even great, but really, really
good. Saw II picks up a seemingly new storyline with
all new victims... except the last one you meet. See
how quick you realize who she was in Part I. Now we
have our cast of victims, but the story is, like part one,
two fold. As we are engaged with the victims, we are
also following the story of one of the victims father's,
played by Donnie Walberg in what is the weakest performance
I've seen from him yet. Part of it is not his fault,
it's the fault of a faulty screenplay that has no problem
shoveling cliché dialogue at good actors who can do better.
Cary Elwes was the victim last time, this time it's Donnie
"Boy Band" Walberg. One of the very cool
things about Saw II, however, is that instead of over-using
the bizarre little puppet from Saw, we now get to meet a
very human and very dying Jigsaw, or John Pratt (I think is
his last name) who is present completely unmysteriously
throughout. Unlike a Jason or a Freddy, Jigsaw could
be your grandfather, and unlike a Hannibal Lector, he isn't
astoundingly cool in his evil. He's a guy, and old
guy, who's had some hard times and happens to like to
torture people to make them appreciate their lives.
He's kind of like Tyler Durdan without social commentary.
Jigsaw is much more philosophically insane, not
sociologically. Unlike recent sequels like
The Ring II: Feces Comes Full Circle, Saw II is smart
enough not to outrageously rape it's own mythology.
Jigsaw does new things but never does anything really out of
character for the rules we've established thus far.
Any new rules, work well within the motif and keep us from
second guessing the writers too much. The setting is
improved, no longer one dirty bathroom but now an entire
dirty house, and instead of the focus on gadgets, the focus
now is more on scenarios. This works.
The opening grabs you by the boonyatzas and for the most
part the film keeps 'em tightly cupped throughout.
This is not a scare movie, though. You'll jump only
rarely; this is a disturb movie. Can you imagine
if you... kinda flick. And some of it is hard to
watch, almost everyone getting at least one dose of a
particular phobia of their own in the movie. Got a
fear of glass and your wrist? You're covered.
Got a fear of needles? You're gonna squirm. Got
a problem with multi-pointed head traumas? Done and
done. How about watching people cut their own flesh
off for way longer than necessary? Excellent, done.
One issue I have may not be the director's fault. This
is that every time something gets figured out, we are forced
to watch a montage of all the clues we got earlier that make
this work. Brian De Palma never had to do this.
I realize the director might not trust the intelligence
level of his audience, but come on, screw 'em if they can't
pick it up. Let 'em rewatch it or throw them in a room
with some f**ked up device on their genitals. But
maybe that's just me. The movie, again, is
not great, but it is a very good sequel, in fact, a sequel
that is better than the first in many regards. Few
things will ever be as visceral as a man cutting off his own
foot, but the writing is ten times better, and the plotting
is much improved. The ending works well, the
characters are okay- they could be better and we end up
either disliking or not knowing enough about a
disproportionate number of them, but it will certainly
satisfy most average gore-hounds who also like good plot.
I had fun, by myself, this afternoon. So it's a good
movie. See Saw... II. Well, that doesn't work as
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