The Trap is the Movie Itself
The premise of Saw II is simple: a group of ex-cons and degenerates wake up trapped in a booby-trapped house filled with poison gas, and they have two hours to solve puzzles before their lungs give up. Sounds tense, right? Except the real trap is that you, the audience, paid money to watch ninety minutes of screaming, shaky camera work, and people making decisions dumber than a raccoon trying to eat a glow stick.
The first Saw was cheap but effective—a twisty little horror that made you squirm. The sequel? It’s like someone photocopied the original script until it was so faint you couldn’t tell if you were looking at ink or smudges, then scribbled some extra gore in the margins.
Jigsaw: From Morbid Philosopher to Rambling Grandpa
Tobin Bell’s Jigsaw was terrifying in the first film—a cancer-stricken mastermind with a messed-up moral code. Here, he’s less “criminal genius” and more “grandpa who cornered you at Thanksgiving to lecture about appreciating life.” He spends half the film hooked up to an IV, rasping out sermons like a motivational speaker who just got out of hospice.
At one point he explains his philosophy to Donnie Wahlberg’s Detective Matthews with the smugness of a man who thinks fortune cookie wisdom + blood is groundbreaking. He’s less scary this time around because he’s there too much. Monsters work better in shadows, not reclining in a warehouse like he’s hosting a TED Talk titled Saw What I Did There: The Importance of Suffering.
Detective Matthews: Angry Dad Energy
Speaking of Donnie Wahlberg, he spends the entire movie shouting at Jigsaw like a divorced dad who just found out the alimony check bounced. His performance has two settings: yelling and really yelling. He’s supposed to be a corrupt cop learning a lesson, but mostly he looks like he wants to ground Jigsaw and take away his booby-trap privileges.
The “game” Jigsaw sets for Matthews is basically: sit still, listen, and maybe your son will be safe. And, of course, Matthews can’t do it, because if movie cops ever just sat quietly we wouldn’t have a film. Instead, he punches a cancer patient and runs off into a Scooby-Doo haunted house full of corpses.
The Cannon Fodder Housemates
The group inside the house is like a reality show casting call gone wrong. We’ve got:
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Xavier: Muscles, tattoos, zero brain cells. Eventually slices his own neck to read a number, which is both stupid and kind of impressive.
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Jonas: The one guy trying to be rational, which in Saw means he’ll die mid-sentence.
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Addison: Dies in a trap because she sticks her arms into razor boxes without thinking “hey, maybe don’t.”
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Laura: Coughs and dies because of the nerve gas, which is less a trap and more a boring way to pad runtime.
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Obi: The guy whose actual name sounds like a knockoff Jedi. Gets incinerated trying to grab antidotes in a furnace.
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Gus: Dies in minute ten because someone peeks through a peephole. Nice knowing you, Gus.
And, of course, Amanda, the franchise’s favorite “survivor turned apprentice.” She mostly just watches everyone else implode and smirks like the world’s edgiest intern.
The Traps: Gore for Gore’s Sake
The original Saw worked because the traps were psychological torture devices. Here, they’re just gross obstacle courses:
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A mask full of spikes that shuts on your head.
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A syringe pit (which would’ve been scarier if Xavier didn’t toss Amanda in like a sack of potatoes).
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A furnace with a secret lever that says “pull me” but actually says “BBQ yourself.”
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The infamous razor box, where common sense could’ve solved the puzzle faster than the victim could bleed out.
Instead of feeling tense or clever, the traps feel like rejected Fear Factor challenges where everyone forgot to bring helmets.
Pacing: Two Hours of Screaming
Every Saw film has people screaming, but Saw II turns it into an Olympic sport. Half the dialogue is just people shrieking at each other in dimly lit hallways. The camera shakes like the cinematographer drank six espressos and filmed during a minor earthquake. By the halfway point, you don’t care who lives or dies—you just want the noise to stop.
The Big Twist: We’ve Seen This Before
The ending twist, the franchise’s trademark, lands with a thud. Surprise! The video feed Jigsaw showed the cops wasn’t live, it was prerecorded. Surprise again! Amanda is his apprentice. Surprise third time! Donnie Wahlberg gets chained up in the same bathroom as the first film.
It’s less “shocking reveal” and more “franchise copy-paste.” You can practically hear the writers high-fiving each other for pulling the exact same rug twice.
Wasted Potential
It’s frustrating because Saw II could have worked. Expanding Jigsaw’s mythology? Great idea. Building a house full of traps instead of a single room? Sure, why not. But the execution is clumsy, the characters are cardboard, and the tension collapses under the weight of too many screaming matches. Instead of escalating the dread, it just escalates the volume.
Even Jigsaw’s moralizing, which in the first film had some twisted logic, becomes laughable here. He talks about valuing life while building a syringe ball pit. He lectures people about choices while throwing addicts and convicts into gas chambers. At this point, he’s not a philosopher—he’s a sadistic contractor.
Best and Worst Moments
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Best: Amanda digging through the syringe pit. Horrifying, disgusting, and memorable in the worst way. The one trap that actually feels like a nightmare.
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Worst: Detective Matthews realizing he should’ve just sat in a chair and waited. Imagine dying of stupidity that could’ve been avoided by a nap.
Why It Smells Like a Trap
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Noise instead of tension. Screaming ≠ scary.
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Jigsaw monologues too much. Less mysterious villain, more cranky uncle with a PowerPoint.
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Characters you don’t care about. They’re all meat for the grinder, and the film knows it.
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Recycled twists. Once is clever. Twice is lazy.
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Donnie Wahlberg sweating through every scene. It’s exhausting just to watch.
Final Thoughts: The Real Game is Surviving the Runtime
Saw II is like a bad hangover: loud, messy, and full of regrets. It takes the haunting simplicity of the first movie and drowns it in gore, noise, and clichés. The traps are nastier, but not scarier. The characters are louder, but not deeper. And the twist is bigger, but not smarter.
The real lesson Jigsaw teaches here isn’t about appreciating life—it’s about appreciating the first Saw for not being this exhausting.
