Saw II (Film Review)

2005 Lions Gate Films
Directed by: Darren Lynn Bousman; Written by: Leigh Whannell and Darren Lynn Bousman
Starring: Donnie Wahlberg, Franky G, Glenn Plummer, Beverley Mitchell, Dina Meyer, Emmanuelle Vaugier, Erik Knudsen, Shawnee Smith, and Tobin Bell
MPAA Rating: R; Running Time: 93 Minutes
The Nicperiment Score: 6/10

A group of strangers wake up, imprisoned, on the floor of a dilapidated, mansion, with no memory of how they got there. They soon discover they are being poisoned with fatally toxic gas, though there are syringes full of antidote hidden around the house. To access the syringes, they'll have to maneuver through, dangerous, possibly fatal traps of a highly personalized kind. They soon discover, amidst their arguing and horrific deaths, that they've all been imprisoned before. Though they are criminals, they have all once been imprisoned on faulty charges by the same dirty cop. All of them that is, except for the lone teenage boy in their midst....and the cop who put them away just happens to be his father. Meanwhile, that father has captured the sociopathic, yet dying man who put the ex-criminals and his son into the house. Can he somehow get the location of the house from this psycho, nicknamed Jigsaw, while the prisoners try to escape on their own...or will everyone in the house die, indirectly, yet at the hand of the genius evil old man who set this all in motion?
I thought about 2005's Saw 2 long and hard after watching it, and I'm still not actually sure if the plot works. Leigh Whannell, writing with new director (replacing James Wan), Darren Lynn Bousman, tries to both repeat a few beats from the original film, while doing something completely different. Accordingly, parts of the film, particularly something that happens with about 10 minutes left, are brilliant, and others are mind-numbingly stupid. For instance, Jigsaw, the movie monster name for this series' central villain (until he himself eventually croaks several movies in), is seemingly meticulous and insistent that he is just trying to teach people who don't care about their lives to appreciate them, but one character dies from the gas before ever meeting her test, and who's to say the vast majority of these characters wouldn't have just met the same fate? There are too many variables here that make his plan, and thus the film feel a bit dumb, but then again, as I mentioned, there are some strokes of shocking brilliance.

Likewise, the puke green visuals here are appealingly unappealing, but the 2005 film is just a little too far away from the 1990s to maximize its grimy details. The sets and cinematography feel just a bit too minimalist, too bare and clean, when a more detailed level to the grime would give Saw II more visual depth and a greater sense of mystery and dread. The performances are also hit-and-miss, with some feeling barely better than community theater work, but Donnie Wahlberg, as the highly flawed protagonist cop, and Tobin Bell, as Jigsaw, turning in excellent work.
In the end, I enjoyed Saw II a bit, but I couldn't help feeling like the film could be better, perhaps if the studio had put more than a year into its development and creation (Saw II was released the day before the first film's one-year anniversary). Saw II certainly has its charms, but like Jigsaw, it is unfortunately not as brilliant as it thinks it is.