“SAW II” (2005)

Starring: Donnie Wahlberg, Shawnee Smith & Tobin Bell
Written by Darren Lynn Bousman & Leigh Whannell
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

Polly Staffle Rating: *

I'm not completely against all sequels. But overall, I would say I don't view them very highly. Sometimes a sequel can actually surpass the original, which was the case with “Rocky III.” The key is to keep all the elements that made the first one good and add to them. If you have a great character, bring them back. Try to keep the same actor/actress, but if you can't pay Jodie Foster because she won an Oscar the first time around and now wants more money, get Julianne Moore. Who knows, she may even do a better job. Even if you change actors for the sequel, don't change the character. Just slowly develop them some more. Horror movies are the easiest to churn out sequels for with three different ways to do it. You can kill off the villain and bring them back at any point in the series like the classic madmen of franchises Freddy Krueger, Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees. You can just have someone who escapes the first one, return to be put in a similar situation like Ash in “Evil Dead” or Sidney in “Scream.” You can also have some underlying theme that ties the films together like “Urban Legend,” “The Amityville Horror,” “The Crow,” “From Dusk Till Dawn” and “Final Destination.” With the exception of George Romero’s “Living Dead” series, the latter formula usually produces some pretty bad films. Many so bad they get straight to video releases. Look no further than “Urban Legends: Bloody Mary,” “The Crow: Wicked Prayer” and “From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter” for examples that even partially taint my view of the originals. These type of sequels usually spin completely out of control as well. How the hell else do you think we would have gotten a haunted dollhouse or a haunted clock without “The Amityville Horror” series? We wouldn’t have. Though it got a theatrical release and kind of has a returning villain, “Saw II” can be placed right beside those. It's that awful.

“Saw II” is painfully bad. It is nothing but an imitation of the original. Fourteen minutes into the film I figured the ending out. Along the way, I saw each and every little turn coming for miles. If you've seen the first movie, you've seen this one. All they did was rehash the same stuff they did previously. They just do it poorly with a slick over-produced Hollywood feel. If I was flipping through channels and caught just a piece of this movie, I'd be wondering if I just turned on a bad episode of “CSI” or that LL Cool J movie “SWAT.”

The Jigsaw Killer is back and though he is dying of cancer, he now has hair and looks a bit like Christopher Walken. But it's him and he is back to get jiggy with it. Of course, Tobin Bell who plays “Jigsaw” had 16th billing and was in the original film for all of one minute. The makers of “Saw II” must have forgotten what made “Saw” so good. It had nothing to do with the villain. He’s not loveable like Chucky in “Child’s Play” and he’s not full of wise cracks like Freddy Krueger. He’s not even scary. He’s an old man dying of cancer. It’s not even believable that he could do any of the stuff he pulls off.

They also give us more victims than the original, but none of them are likeable and the biggest name is Marky Mark's older brother Donnie Wahlberg. The movie has a budget four times the original, but you wouldn't know it from the casting. I will agree Donnie looks like an older version of his brother and sounds like a combination of Bruce Willis and Marky Mark, but still no former member of New Kids on the Block should be considered star power. It’s not that I need the cast of a trendy TV show like horror movies love to do or anybody bigger named than that, it’s just where the hell did the extra three million dollars go? The film doesn’t look any better. The effects aren’t better. They even use clips of the first movie in flashbacks. The producers got screwed on this deal. Even worse, if you paid to watch this garbage, you were robbed as well.

The raw energy of the first one - gone. The surprise of the first one - gone. I always saw the original movie as sort of a horror movie version of “Reservoir Dogs.” You have a couple of guys in a warehouse talking a lot with a guy laying on the floor bleeding. The movie jumps around to get you to where the characters are now. A few hacked off body parts later, we get a great ending with all the characters we have gone to like during the course of the film ending up dead. It wasn’t the slow pace and extra long takes in “Reservoir Dogs” that made it a classic and it wasn’t the spiffy jump suits worn by Chris Penn or the homophobic and racist dialogue the screenplay is littered with. It was the film’s originality. The same goes for “Saw.” It wasn’t the deadly head gear contraption straight out of a Marilyn Manson video or the mechanical clown with a bowtie on a tricycle that made the film. I’ll admit the clown or whatever the hell he is on a tricycle is mighty damn creepy and reminds me of something I’ve had nightmares of the night before the first day of school in elementary, but it still didn’t make the movie. Originality just isn’t something you recreate. Infact, you subtract from the original product when you make a sloppy wannabe sequel. You dilute it. I don’t care how many hypodermic needles you fill a pit with and toss a woman into, the magic is gone.

So what was the point of this film? It's like making a sequel to “Memento” and expecting us to be taken a back when we are shown Leonard (Guy Pearce) in a new setting, struggling with the same problem and ending with the same results. Actually, it would be more like making “Memento” without Guy Pearce, but instead centering the story around a new guy going through the same thing Leonard went through and having Natalie (Carrie-Ann Moss) lead him through the adventure. Or even better, let's make a sequel to “The Sixth Sense” and make the Donnie Wahlberg character Vincent hang out with some kid that sees dead people. No Bruce Willis. No Haley Jole Osment.

If you don't get where I am going with this - simply put, “Saw II” should have never been made. The sad part is, there will be at least another one. It will be even more ridiculous. The first one was good because it came out of nowhere. There had never been a film with a concept like it. Now we have two and I’m sure numerous copycats are on their way to video store shelves as I type this. Maybe the third one will be in 3D.

Then in the fourth one they can have a prequel with the “Jiggsta” as a little kid terrorizing the playground. Oh, this just in… I was just handed the script for “Saw 4: Cutting Class.” I’m told the film will be about Jigsaw’s life in second grade. It’s going to be set in the 80’s and the word is they are hoping for a Culkin to play the lead. If there isn’t one the right age, they are thinking about mixing the DNA of Macaulay with Haley Jole Osment, Dakota Fanning, the Olsen twins, Gary Coleman, Andy Milonakis and Michael Jackson to create a super kid actor that will never grow up. Could you imagine the potential with one of these Frankensteins? “Silver Spoons,” “Different Strokes” and “Punky Brewster” could still be on TV had the stars never gotten older. Anyway, here’s a bit of the narration the super kid will say as Jigsaw: “Buddy doesn’t know how good he has it. He never has to study for spelling tests and still aces them, but he’s too good to enter the school spelling bee. He’s also a complete jerk, yet all the girls with their side ponytails flock to him. It’s because he’s so good at Pac-Man, dodge ball, break dancing and spelling. What a spaz. Look at him with his Swatch watches, those shiny parachute pants, his Heather Thomas t-shirt and Velcro checkerboard sneakers. Are his parents rich? Don’t worry. He’ll get his. I’ve tied him to the merry-go-round and spun it as fast as I could just as the first bell rang. By the time he unties himself and makes his way to class, he’ll be tardy and dizzy. Hopefully the teacher will give him detention and put it on his permanent record.” I know what you are thinking… If Jigsaw was in second grade in the 80’s, he would only be in his thirties now. Isn’t he at least 50? Yes, that is correct. That’s where the twist comes in. This is actually Jigjaw, Jr. and at the end, junior gets kicked in the groan and dies. Junior’s in music class playing his flute-a-phone and his arch nemesis Buddy walks up and kicks him as hard as he can. Blood starts spraying everywhere like the dancing water fountains at The Bellagio. Jimmy slips in the blood and actually swallows his flute-a-phone mouthpiece. So then Daddy Jigsaw comes to the school and he’s holding his son in his arms. As Junior passes, Daddy Jigsaw promises that he will never take his life for granted and he will continue Junior’s work. He then proceeds to cut the flute-a-phone mouthpiece out of Buddy’s throat with a hacksaw.

Ok, so that last paragraph was a complete lie. My point is this sequel business is way out of control. We didn’t need another “Saw” like we don’t need another “Reservoir Dogs.” Most sequels are nothing more than garbage. For every “Rocky III” there are ten “Rocky Fours” and for every “Rocky IV” there are another ten sequels as bad as “Saw II.” I knew from day one that a sequel was a bad idea. In ten years there is no telling where we will be with this series. If you think my part four scenario is far fetched just think back to the original “Friday the 13th.” Remember, Jason wasn’t even in that film. He showed up in the second one wearing a sack over his head and didn’t don the hockey mask till the third one when he stole it from a victim. We then got “Friday the 13th Part IV: The Final Chapter” and that was supposed to be the end. Then Jason’s uncle or somebody was all pissy in part five and he went on a rampage. By part six, we were back in business. Since then we have had Jason on a boat, Jason going to hell, Jason in space and Jason taking on Freddy. Now they want to go and remake the first one so they can start all over again. Why remake the first one so soon? They haven’t even used the series to its fullest potential. They’re only at part 11. Part 12 should be “Jason vs. Iraq: The Patriot Acts” with Jason working for the United States killing innocent men, women and children of another country. Then would come “13:13 – Weapons of Mass Destruction” with two identical Jasons battling it out for world domination. What happened was one of those science savvy Middle Eastern countries got a piece of Jason’s DNA and duplicated him in no time. They can’t take a hot bath whenever the hell they want, but they were able to clone Jason. Is this the territory where “Saw” is headed? To me, it’s already there.

Ideas for Saw sequels

Saw Wars – Jigsaw’s nephew Electric Knife battles it out with his uncle over an old grudge. Jigsaw once pulled a prank on Electric Knife that involved killing off every woman Knife ever came into contact with. Knife had to go to jail over it, but now his mom Circular Saw just busted him out and they are going to chop Jigsaw to pieces.

Return of the Jigsaw – Jigsaw is dead and buried. A crazy voodoo lady gets struck by lightning while she is trying to bring her bow-tie wearing, tricycle riding clown to life and accidentally animates him by resurrecting Jigsaw’s soul.

Texas Saw Mascara – Jigsaw, still living in the bow-tie having, blush wearing tricycle boy’s body, moves to Texas and tries to live a farmers life. He hooks a tiller to his tricycle and grows himself a huge garden, but soon decides to have a sex change operation to live life as a woman.

- CCF, April 2006