Saw II
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| Saw II | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Darren Lynn Bousman |
| Produced by | Gregg Hoffman Oren Koules Mark Burg |
| Written by | Leigh Whannell Darren Lynn Bousman |
| Starring | Donnie Wahlberg Shawnee Smith Tobin Bell |
| Music by | Charlie Clouser |
| Distributed by | Lions Gate |
| Release date(s) | October 28, 2005 |
| Running time | 93 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $4,000,000 |
| Preceded by | Saw |
| Followed by | Saw III |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Saw II is the sequel to the 2004 horror / thriller film Saw. The entire film (apart from external shots) was shot in one building over the span of 25 days. It was released in most parts of the world on October 28, 2005, but not released in Australia until December 1, 2005. Darren Lynn Bousman took over the directing duties of the film, and also co-wrote the story's script with Leigh Whannell, the original film's co-writer. The film is currently #16 on Bravo's Even Scarier Movie Moments. Following the film's opening weekend gross of $31.5m, Lions Gate Films commissioned Saw III, released on October 27, 2006.
Tagline:
- Oh yes... There will be blood.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
The film starts off with man named Michael waking up alone in a room, seated in a chair with a device fastened around his neck and strapped on his chest. When he starts calling for help, a TV turns on, showing the disturbing puppet that the Jigsaw Killer (Bell) uses. Jigsaw's recorded message tells Michael that he has wasted his life watching others live out theirs. He is told — via a cryptic message and some X-rays — that the key to the device has been placed behind his right eye. The message then says, "How much blood will you shed to stay alive Michael? Live or die. Make your choice." When the TV turns off, he gets up and pushes it over in anger. The mask, which is lined on the inside with long, very sharp nails, is set on a spring timer, which he unwittingly starts when he pulls a wire off of it. The timer starts, and he notices a small box with a scalpel inside. Unable to remove his eye he throws away the scalpel and screams desperately for help. Michael is unable to get the key in time, and the device slams shut on his head, killing him almost instantly.
Detective Eric Matthews (Wahlberg), goes to pick up his son Daniel from a police office (he was arrested for stealing). While they are walking to the car, they start to argue. Daniel says he is going back to his mother's house earlier, and Matthews screams in his face to go. As Eric was sitting in his bedroom, he tries to call Daniel to apologize, telling him to leave a message. He is then called to a crime scene. When he arrives, it is Michael from before. His partner tells him to look on the ceiling. In large red letters, there is a message reading, "Look Closer, Detective Matthews." As Matthews lies in bed thinking about the message, he remembers seeing the name of a local engineering company engraved on the metal contraption, and believes this is where Jigsaw is. After his initial reluctance, his former partner, Kerry (Meyer), convinces him to join the SWAT team who are going to arrest Jigsaw.
Jigsaw, ever the meticulous planner, has booby trapped the building, and laid his plans on the assumption of a police assault. A foretaste of this arises when some of the team are trapped and injured on the stairs, but when they find Jigsaw, he is in very fragile condition due to his advanced stage of cancer, and offers no resistance to arrest. As they take him into custody, he invites Matthews and the others to examine an adjoining room, in which they find several monitors showing various rooms of a house in an unknown location, with an electronic timer counting down from two hours. One of the monitors shows a room containing eight people, including Matthews' son, Daniel. They are the intended victims in Jigsaw's current game.
The story switches to the room in the house, where the confused captives are regaining consciousness and becoming aware of their surroundings. One of the house's captives, Amanda (Smith), looks for hidden objects, finding a key and tape recorder hidden behind the bricked off fireplace. The tape contains a message from Jigsaw explaining their predicament: the air in the house contains a low concentration of sarin, a deadly nerve gas (as used in the real-life sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway), and although the house will unlock in three hours, this will not save them, as they will die in two hours unless they find the antidotes that are hidden around the house. They are given cryptic clues that they each have the combination to the safe in the "back of their mind", and that the combination's order can be found "over the rainbow". The note with the key warns them not to use it to open the door in the room, but Xavier (Franky G), a hot-headed ex-convict, pointedly ignores the message and turns the key in the lock while Gus (Nappo) is looking through the eyehole. The lock is rigged to fire a gun pointing directly into the eyehole, which fires, killing Gus almost instantly. Amanda is asked how she knew to look for the objects, and it is revealed that she is the only known survivor from the first film, and pleads with them that to survive, they have to follow the "rules".
The captives begin to explore the house. Laura (Mitchell) finds a door leading to the basement, with another tape marked for Obi (Burd) which reveals to the group that Obi had assisted Jigsaw to get the others in the house. It explains that there are two antidotal syringes inside a large furnace in the room. He tells Obi that, though he may have one syringe for himself, the other is his to donate, the tape finishes reminding Obi that "When you're in hell, only the devil can help you." Obi climbs inside to retrieve the syringes. He takes the first syringe but when he tries to take the second syringe, a trap is triggered which closes the furnace door and ignites the furnace. He begins kicking the door but is unable to open it. He backs into the other end of the furnace noticing a valve beside a painting of the devil which says "twist" on it. Obi is too scared to reach beyond flames to attempt to twist the valve though, and continues cowering in the back of the furnace. Although the others are able to break the glass he cannot get out beyond his shoulders, and Obi burns to death as both of the antidotes are lost.
Meanwhile, Jigsaw refuses to tell Matthews the address of the video feed, instead saying that to save his son's life, he must play a game. The game is seemingly simple, as he just has to sit with Jigsaw — by himself — and listen to what Jigsaw has to say, and if he succeeds at the game, he will get his son back. Matthews refuses, but is cajoled by Kerry to "humor" Jigsaw anyway and buy them time to trace the signal and locate the house.
Through a series of flashbacks, Jigsaw reveals himself to be John Kramer, a terminal cancer patient (and, apparently, was given this news by Dr. Lawrence Gordon from the first film), who attempted suicide by driving his car off a cliff. However, Kramer survived, despite severe injuries. He became aware how people did not appreciate their lives unless they knew it could imminently end. Henceforth, he resolved to test the human ability to endure great suffering and show determination, in order to demonstrate that they value the life they have. As Jigsaw talks, Matthews is becoming more and more agitated, unable to cope with the countdown to his son's likely demise as shown on the monitors.
Jigsaw then reveals Matthews' involvement to the officers in the engineering building: - as a "hard headed" cop, he had framed people for crimes they did not commit, and it is these people, plus Matthews' son, who are in the house, and have not yet realized this connection.
In the house, after forcing open a door into another room, the captives find another tape, this time marked for Xavier. On the tape, Jigsaw condemns him for his life as a drug trafficker and states that if he wants to escape, he must "wallow in the filth that he made others wallow in". Daniel pulls back a bed to reveal a large pit in the floor, full of used syringes (some covered in dried blood). The message says that a key is somewhere in the pit which will open a door concealing another antidote; the door, however, is rigged to a timed lock and will lock permanently in two minutes. Unwilling to brave the pit himself, Xavier takes hold of Amanda and throws her screaming into the needles, shouting at her to dig through them to find the key. Amanda, digging through the hundreds of syringes in agony, eventually finds the key and gives it to Xavier. He races to the lock, but fumbles, and the door's timer expires, sealing the door locked. Daniel (Knudsen) helps Amanda out of the pit, sobbing with fear and pain.
Meanwhile, after having grown tired of listening to Jigsaw and helplessly watching one captive after another die while the timer runs down, Matthews loses control and begins brutalizing and beating the frail old man. Savagely battered by Matthews, Jigsaw mutters the words "Game over" (first said by him at the end of the first film) and finally agrees to take Matthews to the house, but only on the condition that it is only the two of them who will go there.
In the house, Xavier is independently trying to find a way to escape. In passing the first victim, he notices a colored number on the back of the neck, and realizes that the combination for the safe has been written on the necks of the individual captives, where they cannot see it. No longer needing the help of the others, he begins stalking the other captives to obtain the different colored numbers written on the back of their necks (the answer to Jigsaw's cryptic clue "[the combination] is in the back of your mind.") The colors, representing the colors of the rainbow, will reveal the combination of the safe when put in order. He kills Jonas (Plummer), notes his number and color, and proceeds to go after the others.
Elsewhere in the house, Laura (Mitchell) finds the answer to another cryptic clue given earlier by Jigsaw ("X marks the spot"), before succumbing to the effects of the nerve gas. Addison (Vaugier) examines a photo frame whose glass is cracked in an "X" shape, finding a photo of Daniel and Matthews together, labeled "Father and Son", which has been placed there to explain to them what they had in common, and that Daniel is the son of the officer who had framed them all.
While pursuing Amanda and Daniel, Xavier comes across Addison who has fallen victim to another of Jigsaw's contraptions — a glass box suspended from the ceiling that contains an antidote. On the underside of the box are two holes just wide enough to put an arm through each, once pushed past the blades covering them. She discovers too late that the blades are arranged similar to a Chinese finger trap, preventing her from removing her arms once inside; the metal edges dig deeper into her flesh the harder she pulls. Worse still, the antidote inside has its plunger stuck to the bottom of the box, so when she tries to pick it up it comes apart and spills away. Unable to extricate her arms, she is suspended from the box screaming and bleeding. Xavier enters to seemingly comfort and rescue her, but is only there to read the number on her neck. He exits the room, leaving Addison to die (either from blood loss or succumbing to the neurotoxin) as she screams in anguish.
Matthews, desperate to rescue his son from the scene on the monitors, leaves the engineering building with Jigsaw without warning the other officers, via a hidden elevator, with the badly beaten Jigsaw providing him directions as they drive. Minutes later, the police finally pinpoint the location of the video feed of the captives and also leave quickly to head for the house, to save the surviving victims.
Elsewhere, Amanda and Daniel (now the sole two survivors of Jigsaw's game other than Xavier), retreat to the room where all the captives awoke. As Xavier attempts to break through the door to get at them, Amanda notices a trapdoor in the floor and the two manage to move the safe and leave the room just as Xavier breaks through. The passageway under the house leads them into the washroom where the first film took place. The bodies of Adam, Zep and Dr. Gordon's severed foot still remain, in a state of advanced decomposition. Xavier corners Amanda and Daniel, where the latter slumps against the wall, apparently dead. Amanda tells Xavier that, as Daniel has died, she remains the only person capable of reading his number, and that if he kills her, he won't be able to find out the number on his own neck. Xavier's response is to take his knife and slice the flesh from the back of his own neck so he can read his own number. As he moves in to kill Amanda, Daniel springs to life and slashes Xavier's throat with a hacksaw found on the floor, killing him.
In the meantime, Jigsaw directs Matthews to the house in which the events have taken place, and gives Matthews the key to get inside. On entering, Matthews finds the dead bodies of the victims littered throughout the rooms.
At the same time, the SWAT team enters the house from which the video feed is transmitted. Kerry, watching the monitors, is confused as to why the video feed is not showing the team. As the team investigate, they find a video player and computer equipment, and realize that the monitors were in fact showing a tape recording ahead of time, meaning the video feed was not live, making the victims dead the entire time.
Meanwhile, Detective Matthews enters the house through a back door, finds the open trapdoor and goes down to search for Daniel. A used syringe is shown, leading the viewers to assume that Daniel used it to survive the poison. Matthews reaches the darkened washroom, and sees someone lying in the bathtub. He approaches cautiously, but the person inside, wearing the same pig mask as Jigsaw from the first film, takes him by surprise and stabs him in the leg with a syringe full of anesthetic. Matthews drops to the floor.
The two hour timer next to the monitors at Wilson Steel finally expires and a safe opens, revealing Daniel inside, wearing an oxygen mask, tired, sweaty, and in shock. He had been in the safe in the building all along; had Matthews followed the rules to Jigsaw's "game" and "just listened" as Jigsaw instructed him, he would have found his son "in a safe, secure place" just as Jigsaw had told him.
When Matthews wakes up, he is in the darkened washroom, chained to the pipework. An audio cassette player is lying next to him. Playing the tape, he learns that Amanda has become Jigsaw's protégé. It was Amanda who was wearing the mask in the washroom; she found a savior, a leader, and a father figure in Jigsaw, and plans to continue his work once he eventually succumbs to the cancer. In a series of flashbacks it is revealed why Jigsaw was happy to sit back while Matthews destroyed his work, and that it was Amanda who had brought Daniel back to be placed in the safe.
As with Adam in the first film, Eric Matthews is helpless to do anything but scream and watch as Amanda closes the door on him, leaving him to die in the dark. "Game over," she says, repeating Jigsaw's line. Matthews, chained to a pipe, is left in the room alone only with the light from his flashlight and his gun now just out of reach. The film closes by showing Jigsaw sitting in Matthews' van, lost to the police, badly beaten, but as the camera zooms out, he slowly forms a smile.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Donnie Wahlberg | Detective Eric Matthews |
| Shawnee Smith | Amanda Young |
| Tobin Bell | John Kramer/Jigsaw |
| Emmanuelle Vaugier | Addison |
| Lyriq Bent | Rigg |
| Tim Burd | Obi |
| John Fallon | Tech |
| Franky G. | Xavier |
| Erik Knudsen | Daniel Matthews |
| Beverley Mitchell | Laura |
| Dina Meyer | Detective Kerry |
| Tony Nappo | Gus |
| Glenn Plummer | Jonas |
[edit] Critical reaction
Even more so than in the previous film, critics found Jigsaw's diabolic "games" to require a large amount of planning and fortuitous timing in order to succeed, causing some to liken his murderous schemes to Rube Goldberg machines. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Tobin Bell addressed some of these criticisms by saying, "My sense is that [Jigsaw] is so detail oriented that I think he thinks in terms of worst case scenario. I think he’s a very good judge of character, so his sense that, for example, that Detective Matthews was going to play right into his trap, which he did, was right on. Now, it seems to me that he’s got plan 2 always in place. And there’s probably been a number of plan 2s. I mean, we’ve only seen three movies. Maybe there are six more somewhere where he failed, where something didn’t play out."[6]
According to Rotten Tomatoes, the aggregate rating of this film was only 35%, with several reviewers revolted by the explicit gore and torture scenes. [7] Of the few critics who provided positive reviews, some remarked that it was a worthy follow-up, providing plenty of what fans of the first expected. [8] As with its predecessor, however, the film garnered far more positive reception with the public than with critics. It currently holds a rating of 74% by users at Rotten Tomatoes, and a score of 7.0 at the Internet Movie Database.
[edit] Soundtrack
[edit] Trivia
- In August 2005, the MPAA rejected the poster for Saw II which used two severed fingers to resemble "II" in the movie's title. A new poster was produced, still using the fingers but not explicitly showing that they're severed. The original poster was used for most other countries, however.
- When Jigsaw gives directions to the house to Detective Matthews, he mentions it as being the "last house on the left," which is also the name of a popular cult horror film directed by Wes Craven.
- One of the posters for the film Scary Movie 4 parodied the "close-up on severed fingers" poster for this film. But instead of the fingers making a two, the fingers are in the shape of a four, and one with a Hello Kitty bandage. The poster also says "The funniest thing you ever sawed."
- According to the Saw II DVD commentary, the "Chinese finger trap" that Addison gets caught in was intended for Gus, and that his tape would have said something along the lines of 'putting your hands into the cookie jar for money'. Addison's trap, which was not revealed in the film, would have been a sort of waffle grill that her hands would be trapped in. The DVD commentary noted that above Addison's wrist trap there was a key to unlock the entire trap.
- Also mentioned in the DVD commentary, scattered around Jigsaw's lair are items from the house. The picture of 'X marks the spot' can be seen over Jigsaw's shoulder when he and Detective Matthews are talking.
- The clock shown in the bathroom of Saw II is different than the one shown in the bathroom of the first Saw film.
- Shawnee Smith was four months pregnant during the filming of Saw II.
- The scene with the elevator is a clip from the movie Revenge Of The Sith
[edit] Uncut Edition
Saw II has been released on a standard as well as a "Special Edition" uncut DVD. Differences in this edition include:
- When the police are entering Wilson Steel, three short cuts are shown of Jigsaw upstairs, realizing the police have arrived.
- When the police are approaching Jigsaw several scenes are added where he is eating cereal.
- Jigsaw has a few extra lines of dialogue with detective Matthews, mentioning that he has "wiped the slate clean", and that most people are merely "sleepwalking".
- When Obi is trapped in the oven, he attempts to break the glass on the far side as he is burning alive.
- The scene of Amanda thrashing around in the syringe pit is extended.
- In the bathroom, Charlie Clouser's score begins as Xavier begins cutting off his skin, and continues until he dies from his throat being slashed.
- The opening scene with "The Venus Headtrap" is extended and the song "Irresponsible Hate Anthem (Venus Headtrap Mix) is playing in the background.
- Before Gus dies, he has flashbacks and hallucinations.
[edit] Box office gross
- Made for only $4 million, Saw II grossed over $144 million worldwide, which includes $87 million in the United States.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Official website
- Saw II at the Internet Movie Database
- Saw II at Rotten Tomatoes
- Site for Donnie Wahlberg: Eric Mathews
- Official Message Board
- Saw III: Jigsaw Cuts Loose Video interview with Tobin Bell on MTV.com
| The Saw Trilogy |
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Films |
