Billy Cox
11th November 2007, 02:27 AM (02:27)
'Saw 1' was one of those movies that does things that are new and are considered by some to be groundbreaking or brilliant, so it was with some trepidation that I rented 'Saw 2' from Netflix. Sequels are often just a rehash of the original plot with a new cast of victims and even more gut-wrenching ways in which each one meets their end.
I am somewhat jaded by sequels that fail to capture the original magic and take it in new directions. I rate the sequels to 'The Matrix' as the worst ever made, followed closely by Alien 3, every one of the stupid Disney sequels (Bambi 2, The Little Mermaid 2, etc.) and of course Superman 3 and 4...but I digress.
In the original 'Saw' the bad guy is nearly caught, but evades capture. In Saw 2, the bad guy is (intentionally) cornered early in the movie and the remainder of the movie cuts back and forth between the players of the 'game' and the bad guy and a police detective (the main character) who is trying to find out where the 'game' is being played so as to rescue the players; one of which is the detective's teenage son.
Like the original, there are a significant plot twists that make the ending more tragically ironic while also explaining how there can be any further sequels when the bad guy character has only a short time to live due to terminal cancer.
Saw 2 has a wider cast of characters in harm's way which inevitably lends itself to a comparison with the 'Friday the 13th' genre of horror movie. The viewer knows that the characters are going to die horrible deaths one by one and the main unknowns are who and how. The number characters makes it difficult or impossible to do character development beyond the one or two people whose characters are not going to die.
Where as the players of the game in Saw 1 are shackled to the plumbing in one room, the players in Saw 2 are able to move around freely within a house. The imminent danger is that sarin gas (think Tokyo subway gas attack) is being pumped into the house and the characters have to find antidote syringes that are hidden throughout the house before the gas kills them.
Once again, there is a recorded message from the bad guy outlining the task and giving some cryptic clues which of course the hapless victims will not remember or make use of until later in the plot.
As the story proceeds, there are constant reminders that some (but not all?) of the occupants of the house are suffering from sarin gas poisoning, however one of the characters' method of ensuring that he gets the antidote results in the other characters having more to fear from him than from the poison gas. (Only one character actually dies of poisoning.)
Overall, I thought Saw 2 was a reasonably good sequel although I thought the number of people in the game did not serve the story very well. Since the bad guy had considerable screen time in this movie, the focus seemed also to shift from the theme of really being 'alive' to being about the bad guy's struggle with his own mortality. If you like Saw 1, you'll probably like Saw 2 although it seems less disciplined in story and character development.
I am somewhat jaded by sequels that fail to capture the original magic and take it in new directions. I rate the sequels to 'The Matrix' as the worst ever made, followed closely by Alien 3, every one of the stupid Disney sequels (Bambi 2, The Little Mermaid 2, etc.) and of course Superman 3 and 4...but I digress.
In the original 'Saw' the bad guy is nearly caught, but evades capture. In Saw 2, the bad guy is (intentionally) cornered early in the movie and the remainder of the movie cuts back and forth between the players of the 'game' and the bad guy and a police detective (the main character) who is trying to find out where the 'game' is being played so as to rescue the players; one of which is the detective's teenage son.
Like the original, there are a significant plot twists that make the ending more tragically ironic while also explaining how there can be any further sequels when the bad guy character has only a short time to live due to terminal cancer.
Saw 2 has a wider cast of characters in harm's way which inevitably lends itself to a comparison with the 'Friday the 13th' genre of horror movie. The viewer knows that the characters are going to die horrible deaths one by one and the main unknowns are who and how. The number characters makes it difficult or impossible to do character development beyond the one or two people whose characters are not going to die.
Where as the players of the game in Saw 1 are shackled to the plumbing in one room, the players in Saw 2 are able to move around freely within a house. The imminent danger is that sarin gas (think Tokyo subway gas attack) is being pumped into the house and the characters have to find antidote syringes that are hidden throughout the house before the gas kills them.
Once again, there is a recorded message from the bad guy outlining the task and giving some cryptic clues which of course the hapless victims will not remember or make use of until later in the plot.
As the story proceeds, there are constant reminders that some (but not all?) of the occupants of the house are suffering from sarin gas poisoning, however one of the characters' method of ensuring that he gets the antidote results in the other characters having more to fear from him than from the poison gas. (Only one character actually dies of poisoning.)
Overall, I thought Saw 2 was a reasonably good sequel although I thought the number of people in the game did not serve the story very well. Since the bad guy had considerable screen time in this movie, the focus seemed also to shift from the theme of really being 'alive' to being about the bad guy's struggle with his own mortality. If you like Saw 1, you'll probably like Saw 2 although it seems less disciplined in story and character development.