Dir. Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005, USA, 92 mins
Cast: Donnie Wahlberg, Shawnee Smith, Tobin Bell
Where there’s a mildly successful horror film, a sequel is sure to follow. And hardly a year since its predecessor tapped into the film-going public’s insatiable desire for bloodshed, Saw II arrives to offer the strong-stomached more of the same.
Eric Matthews (Wahlberg) is a cop on the edge. Struggling with a tearaway teenage son, as well as some questionable work ethics, he is alarmed to find his name sprawled across the ceiling at the scene of a grizzly murder. Desperate to uncover the killer, he and a police team head to an abandoned steel factory where they discover the enigmatically named Jigsaw. When Jigsaw reveals he has imprisoned a group of social misfits in a booby-trapped house filled with macabre and deadly games to play for their survival, events take an unexpectedly personal turn as Matthews realises his son is one of the unfortunate chosen few.
With the action incessantly flicking back and forth from the cops in the factory to the gang inside the house, the film’s structure swiftly adopts a tiresomely monotonous rhythm, with the police scenes becoming ever more redundant and serving only to fracture what minimal suspense is created in the house. Wahlberg’s ‘cop with issues’ is too familiar a prospect to provide any substantial emotional depth to proceedings, while the other law enforcers are given little to do but loiter anxiously in the background. Far more involving are the scenes inside Jigsaw’s house of horrors. While again the actors here are not required to do much except squabble and scream, there is a perverse pleasure to be taken from the menagerie of horrid deaths, of which an overhead box with razor sharp armholes proves a particular delight. Yet while such instances are as sordid and grotesque as one could desire, the epileptic editing and penchant for sped-up camerawork serve only to distance oneself from the on screen atrocities, numbing audiences with a preference for flashy technique over genuine atmosphere.
There are a multitude of references to past genre landmarks for horror savvy audiences to knowingly chuckle at throughout, although such self-reflexivity seems ill at ease in a movie intent on providing an uncompromising battering of the senses. One particularly leaden gag has the location of the booby-trapped dwelling revealed to be the “last house on the left”, providing only a distraction from proceedings by offering audiences the chance to smugly pat themselves on the back for spotting the citation. Elsewhere a sequence with a girl agonisingly writhing in a pit of syringes evokes fond memories of Argento’s trench of wires in Suspiria (1976), while the steady cam glide through a labyrinthine cellar during the film’s climactic chase sequence undeniably provokes reminiscences of Jack Nicholson’s manic hunt through the wintry maze at the end of The Shining (1980). Although for all its allusions to past classics, the premise of a gang of strangers desperately attempting timed challenges in rigged rooms, feels strangely like a Grand Guignol variation on Richard O’Brien’s cult game show ‘The Crystal Maze’.
Like its precursor, the incessant barrage of noise and graphic violence makes Saw II a frantic but hollow experience. Great horror is often defined by the moments of silence to generate the imposing sense of dread, though no such acknowledgment of restraint is evident here in a film that favours a direct visual assault over a cerebral one. When we first encounter Jigsaw he amusingly informs Matthews, “Oh yes, there will be blood”. And blood there is, in abundance. Unfortunately suspense, subtlety and depth are simply not on the menu.
Michael Blyth
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