Xavier returns to the safe room, trying
in vain to open the safe until he notices a number tattooed on the
back of Gus' head. Jigsaw's clue from the first tape plays in his
mind, as the proverbial light bulb goes off over his thick skull. He
kills Jonas and gets the number off his neck, taking off after the
rest of the survivors.
They're across the house, Laura finally
finding the X Jigsaw mentioned way back when on a picture frame.
Addison looks behind it to find a picture of Matthews and Daniel,
confronting him over this but Laura has the courtesy to break up the
tension by dying. Now THAT'S how you change an awkward subject!
Addison decides she can't trust anyone and takes off on her own.
Xavier gets the number off Obi's remains while Amanda discovers
Jonas' body and drags Daniel to safety.
I can't help but wonder what the point
of this little plot was, as Jigsaw said when they found 'X' it'd help
them all realize why they're there. Sure, Matthews arrested all of
them but how it THAT going to help? All it's going to do is make
them turn on Daniel and probably try to kill him, which is VIOLENTLY
counterproductive to Jigsaw's master plan. I guess since Jigsaw can
anticipate everyone's decisions in perfect detail he knew by the time
it was discovered most of them would be dead and it wouldn't matter,
but still it seems like an odd thing to leave hanging out there.
Laura's number is next on Xavier's
list, where he also discovers the picture outing Daniel as Matthews'
son. Fuel on the fire there. On the monitors Matthews watches all
this unfold until he snaps, grabbing a gun and beating the living
hell out of Jigsaw. Once more back to the house, as Addison happens
to find another room that's unlocked with a glass box hanging from
the ceiling with a syringe inside.
This is the Razor Box, another
fan favourite, so named for reasons we'll discover in a moment.
There are two holes in the bottom of the box, Addison sticking her
hands through to grab the syringe. Things go instantly wrong as the
flaps covering the holes are revealed to be giant razor blades,
cutting into her arms the more pressure she exerts trying to pull her
arms out. Her cries for help alert Xavier, who reads the number on
her neck and leaves her to bleed to death.
Jigsaw finally submits to Matthews'
relentless beating, saying he'll take him and ONLY him to Daniel.
Matthews', continuing the franchise's already questionable portrayal
of intelligent cops, agrees and sneaks him out via a hidden elevator.
The SWAT team tries to stop them, but they're out on the road before
they even leave the factory.
Meanwhile SWAT technicians finally
manage to backtrack the signal where the monitor feed is broadcasting
from, Rigg and his team departing for the destination. What's the
over/under on both these locations being the same place? Amanda and
Daniel have holed up in the safe room, Xavier outside and trying to
beat his way in. Amanda notices Jonas' blood is draining through a
crack in the floor, realizing there's a trap door in the floor. She
finds it locked, but Daniel remembers Jonas had the key they found
with the tape recorder and finds it in his pants pocket. They unlock
the hatch as Matthews and Jigsaw pull up outside, Jigsaw giving him a
key to use inside the house.
Shots of Matthews slowly moving through
the house are paralleled with Amanda and Daniel running through the
basement, Xavier chasing behind them. The halls of the basement look
VERY familiar if you SAW the last movie, especially when Daniel
comments on a horrible smell coming from somewhere nearby.
Rigg and crew also break into the
house, buuuuuuuuuut this one looks different than the one everyone
else is in. He calls back to Kerry, who reports she can't see him on
any of the monitors. Hmm, THAT can't be good! Amanda and Daniel
slide open a door and find themselves in the bathroom from the last
movie, complete with Adam's withered and reeking corpse still chained
to the pipes. To add to what must be the most lovely smell ever, we
also see Zep's decaying body lying on the floor. And hey, there's
Gordon's severed foot just KICKING IT!
Ba-dum-tss!
Matthews search brings him to the safe
room, going down the open trap door. In the basement, Daniel begins
to succumb to the gas as Xavier stomps into the room. He asks for
their numbers, Amanda making the odd comment that he doesn't know his
own number. How would she know about that? Yeah, he's been shouting
out about numbers but there's no way she should know what he means.
Xavier considers this as she brings up a great point, so he CUTS THE
BACK OF HIS NECK OFF! CHRIST ALMIGHTY! And believe you me, they
show as much of this as humanly possible.
He advances towards Amanda, but Daniel
wakes up and sneak attacks him, grabbing his knife and slashing his
throat wide open to kill him. The SWAT team makes their way through
their house, finding another collection of monitors showing the same
feed Kerry is watching. That's when Rigg notices a stack of VCRs
nearby, hitting pause on one which pauses the video feed. He and
Kerry get their own light bulbs, as it dawns of them they've been
watching an old recording the ENTIRE TIME. That crazy Jigsaw, what WON'T he do?
Matthews enters the bathroom but finds
only bodies instead of his son. He notices a hand sticking out of
the bathtub, approaching it only to find himself ambushed by Pig Mask
who stabs him with a syringe. I can't help but notice Pig Mask has a
very feminine looking hand... Matthews passes out from whatever he
was injected with as back at the factory the three hour time expires.
A nearby safe pops open, Kerry finding Daniel inside with an oxygen
mask on his face. WOW! Matthews is going to feel like the biggest
fucking idiot in the world when he- oh wait, he's probably not coming
back is he? The detective wakes up on the floor of
the bathroom with a tape player next to him, cautiously hitting the
play button. Major surprise coming up if you haven't been following
any of this, but it's AMANDA'S VOICE that greets him.
“Hello Eric, you probably don't even
remember me but you changed my life once. You sent me to prison. I
was guilty of a lot of things but not the drug charge you framed me
for. You wouldn't know the things you lose when you're locked away.
The second time somebody changed my life, I was guilty. But my life
was saved that day. I found myself a father, a leader, a teacher.
What is the cure for cancer, Eric? The cure for death itself? The
answer is immortality. By creating a legacy, by living a life worth
remembering, you become immortal. So now you find the tables are
turned. It is I who will carry on John's work after he dies. And
you are my first test subject. Now you are locked away, helpless and
alone.”.
We get the traditional rapid fire
montage shots to tie everything together, as we see Amanda was indeed
Pig Mask. Matthews finds himself chained to the pipes just like
Gordon and Adam were as Amanda walks up to the door, announces it's
game over, and slams the door shut. Jigsaw smiling at how well this
all worked out over Matthews' screams is our final shot.
Cue the credits.
Different, right? That's to be
expected when your sequel is based off a repurposed script, but
following up Saw with THIS? And again, this isn't a criticism
per se as a lot of people consider this the best Saw movie but
this literally jettisons almost everything the first movie was about.
Gone is the claustrophobic and intimate manner, the tiny set pieces,
the strong focus on characterization, and the incredible restraint on
gore while still keeping it shocking. These are the things I will
always think of when I think of Saw, a movie that I doubt I'll
ever forget.
This movie did the opposite of all of
these points, giving us a very fucked up version of And Then There
Were None. Not only that, but this is the beginning of Jigsaw's
transformation into the most impossibly intelligent villain of all
time with infinite money and resources to accomplish his means. The
first movie was very down to Earth, as his main victims were people
he logically had access to from his time in the hospital.
But here, this is where the script
rewrite really shows. How in the world would Jigsaw have had access
to all of Matthews' hidden misdeeds, as well as being able to track
down all of the people involved in them? Even with the arrests being
public record, how would he have found out about Matthews' problems
with Daniel? For that matter, WHY did he pick Matthews? This is the
problem with establishing logic in the first movie and then just
bulldozing over it.
This extends to the plot of the entire
movie, as almost all of it was POINTLESS. All of the people except
Daniel that Jigsaw, Amanda, and Obi captured were never meant to
survive the Nerve Gas House trap, which goes against everything
Jigsaw stands for as the first movie set up all of his victims have a
CHANCE to redeem themselves. Jigsaw obviously knows the future so he
knew all of them would die, but WHAT IF they had survived? He'd just
kill them all off for no reason? Wouldn't it just have been easier
to capture only Daniel and play out his game with Matthews in the
exact same fashion, forcing the detective to watch as his son slowly
died from poisoning? It's almost like the rest of the people were
there just to fill out the film's run time and try to create some
drama!
And how about that reveal Obi helped
Jigsaw capture everyone, that puzzling plot thread that went
absolutely nowhere? This is actually touched upon in Saw: The
Video Game of all places, which boasts a story written by series
creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell, officially considered canon in
the mythos. There were learn Obi was an arsonist that actively
sought out Jigsaw to test him, putting ads in local newspapers
beginning to be captured.
Picking apart the paper thin plot
aside, it also really didn't help it was so bloody obvious Amanda was
in on the entire thing. That's one of this film's biggest flaws, as
Bousman didn't trust the audience enough so kept showing her being
suspicious just so we'd know what was going on. The only way he
could have been less subtle is if he cut to a closeup of her narrowed
eyes looking back and forth.
Last on my list is something I allude
to earlier, this is where the Saw series began to become all
about the traps at the expense of everything else. After Shawnee
Smith and Donnie Wahlberg's highly effective performance as a regret
filled father, they were the true star of this film. This is nothing
to what we're going to see in a few movies, but they got more screen
time than any of that messy “characterization” from the first
movie. Don't get me wrong, they were very creative and effective,
but you can see the ammo being forged for this series getting slapped
with the insulting label of “torture porn” juuuuuuuust around the
corner.
Taking out Smith and Wahlberg the
acting was very subpar, as the majority of this film was centered
around cookie cutter red herrings that were all just a bunch of
generic characters that could only show anger, anger, and more anger.
BUT, getting to some positives at long last, I was interested in
what happened to all of them thanks to Bousman's direction. He
wisely kept this thing fast paced as possible, keeping the story
flowing smooth and balancing out all the different threads that were
going on. Even though he showed his cards way too often, I still
still riveted to see what was going to happen next and as I've said
before, that's one of the best compliments I can give a movie.
The ending was particularly exciting,
as all the threads started to merge for some sweet edge-of-your seat
action. These are the things that saved the movie and make it a must
see if you have even a passing interest in the genre, especially
since it's going to go downhill here pretty freaking quick. This
pales dramatically when compared to the first movie, but shines like
a beacon when compared to the rest as we'll see with the next sequel.
How bad was it? Find out here!
How bad was it? Find out here!
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