Saw II

(Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005)

The basic story idea underlying this film isn’t bad. The problem is the way in which the idea is executed. For a start, the direction is awful. Two things stand out in particular. One is the use of intentionally over-shaky hand-held camera shots in an obvious attempt to pull the viewer ‘into the action’. This serves only to draw attention to the camerawork itself, and therefore has the complete opposite of the desired effect, detracting from the perceived ‘reality’ of the images on screen. The other is the overuse of rapid-fire jump cuts, punctuated by electrical-sounding snaps and pops, in an obvious attempt to inject a sense of frenetic panic into scenes of horror. Again, the effect of this is to draw attention towards the film’s style and away from its content. And horror is clearly a matter of content, not style. Either a scene is horrific (because it contains something horrific happening to someone), or it isn’t. No amount of pop-video-style film- and sound-editing is going make the difference.
The film’s biggest problem, however, is the incredible number of ridiculously implausible twists and turns required in order to grind out the storyline from beginning to end.* As I said, the basic idea of the film is not bad, so it’s a shame that by the time the final twist eventually arrives, the viewer’s patience has long since been eroded.

Saw II @ IMDb (UK)

* (I’m adding this as a footnote since it assumes knowledge of the film and contains major spoilers. Consider yourself warned.)

On the most charitable interpretation I feel capable of mustering, the implausibility of the plot can be reduced to the following two things:

(1) When the police arrive at Jigsaw’s lair and are presented with the ‘game’ that they have two hours to resolve, they make no attempt to conduct a systematic search of the premises, despite the fact that they have very little information to go on and appear to be occupying a building that is packed to the rafters with potentially clue-laden drawings, plans, designs, tools, machinery, drawers, shelves, containers, etc. Other than standing around idly, the only steps taken to discover information consist in interacting with Jigsaw himself and calling out a tardy tech team to trace the CCTV feed. Had a more thorough search been conducted, one obvious focus of attention would have been the safe that turns out to be crucial to Jigsaw’s entire scheme. “But who’s to say they’d have located the safe?” As the end of the film makes clear, it’s in a prominent position, unhidden from view. “But who’s to say they’d have considered opening the safe?” Safes are pieces of equipment typically used by people to lock away important or precious items—if any part of Jigsaw’s lair is worth searching, surely this is it. “But who’s to say they’d have been able to open the safe?” Well, even allowing that safe-cracking personnel / equipment could not have been dispatched within the two hour time-frame (and let’s face it, the tech team take their sweet fucking time), surely this is a generous window of opportunity to be exploited by a team of physically strong men situated in a building that appears to be packed to the rafters with all manner of industrial-strength engineering equipment.

(2) Jigsaw’s plan involves waiting until Eric (Donnie Wahlberg) gets desperate enough to fall back on his evil cop tactics: extracting information through violence. When this happens, Jigsaw intends to take a bit of a beating, and then feign a concession of defeat, at which point he will offer to take Eric to the location where his son is held. Since it is crucial to the plan that no other cops accompany them to this location, Jigsaw must convince Eric that they are to go alone. Here’s roughly how it transpires:

- Tell me where my son is or I’ll shoot you.
- Ok, you win, I’ll take you to him. Nobody else, though, just me and you.
- Seems reasonable. Let’s go!

What more obvious sign of a set-up could there be than the fact that a man who, at one moment, claims to be utterly surrendering to your authority, suddenly starts imposing fresh conditions only a few seconds later? Here’s how the scene should have played out:

- Tell me where my son is or I’ll shoot you.
- Ok, you win, I’ll take you to him. Nobody else, though, just me and you.
- Fuck that, I’m bringing a massive amount of heavily armed backup (for example, a handful of those SWAT guys that are currently standing around idly in the background, blatantly failing to search the place for clues).
- No, no, it’s got to be just the two of us.
- Look, mate, it’s obvious that this is just another ruse of yours. Either you take me and my massive amount of heavily armed backup right now, or I’ll shoot you.
- Damn, my cunning plan is foiled either way!