Jamie
This is it. Peak Franchise Man. This is the film(s) that sparked the idea for this year-long cycle. We were like “we should start a bunch of franchises we never got around to.” We may as well have said, “let’s watch Saw II & III.” Saw is more or less the platonic ideal of a franchise for Franchise Man. It starts off with a bang. A film that busts through to the mainstream. Gets everyone clamoring for more Saw. So what do you do? Blair Witch looked at that and said, “What if we did Blair Witch but the exact opposite and everyone will hate it?” Saw looked at that and said, “What if we explode heads and rip people’s fingers off and also create a lore so deep that you could swim in it forever and never reach the bottom of the lore?” Guess which one Franchise Man is the most interested in? Saw! Let’s go!
To recap, Jigsaw just keeps on playing games. When the latest victim leads to a message addressed directly to Jigsaw expert Detective Matthews, he is quickly able to track down Jigsaw at an abandoned warehouse. He’s in for a TWISTED awakening, though, when Jigsaw reveals that Matthew’s son Daniel and a bunch of other people have all been trapped in a house slowly filling up with a deadly nerve agent. The game is afoot! A couple of the people are killed in elaborate traps (surprise, surprise) they also reveal some subtle connections to each other in that they all were arrested. Unbeknownst to them, though, they were actually all framed by Detective Matthews. Additionally, one of the people is Amanda, the only known survivor of Jigsaw (mmmmm, lore). They soon start going insane or dying in elaborate traps. One of them, Xavier, figures out that they all have numbers on the back of their necks that will together be a combination to an antidote, but before he can read all the numbers, Daniel kills him. Seeing all this going on through security cameras, Detective Matthews subdues Jigsaw and forces him to take him to the house. Meanwhile the police also are able to trace the video feed and realize that the house where everything happened is long abandoned and the whole game was a recording. At that point a pig masked figure jumps out and traps Detective Matthews. What a trap! Turns out it’s Amanda and she’s now Jigsaw’s apprentice (arrrrggghhhhhhhh, I’m quickening with the lore!). Back at the warehouse a timer goes off and a box opens, revealing Daniel there safe and sound. THE END.
The entire time I watched this movie I was like “This is so dumb. This is so bad. This is dumb and bad.” Somehow with a little distance I have a strange fondness for the silliness that is Saw. Some major horror franchises know what they are and hammer it over and over to the delight of fans and the hatred of critics. Friday the 13th is the classic. Paranormal activity is a recent example. Saw certainly does that. But beyond a meta appreciation for franchises as Franchise Man, I think it’s hard to argue the fact that these movies are silly, unnecessarily gorey, morally problematic nonsense. The acting is truly dire, to boot. These are films to appreciate, but not actually enjoy or like. I do not enjoy or like them, but I will gladly watch them because I’m Franchise Man.
Hot Take Clam Bake! Uh, Jigsaw is dead the whole time… no, that isn’t going to work. How about this? The police are helping Jigsaw. Not actively, just kind of letting him slide. Think about it, literally everyone he kills this time are people that Donnie Wahlberg framed to get them off the streetz. They are the riff raff that the police want gone from the streets of [insert city name that is definitely not Toronto]. Maybe he’s not such a genius after all. Maybe he’s a big ol’ dumbo and the police are like “oh boy, really got us again, Jigsaw. You’re so smart with all your plans and shit that we can’t figure out. Hope you don’t kill another person we totally care about.” Hot Take Temperature: A furnace that explodes if you don’t pull your eyelids off in the next seven seconds.
Patrick?
Patrick
‘Ello everyone! Who’s sawing the sawers? Wait … that’s not the phrase it is? It’s Saw II, Let’s go!
Ah the Saw franchise. As a host of my favorite podcast suggested, the people who try and catch up on the Saw franchise are really just trying to make their lives worse. He ain’t wrong!
Out of all the horror genres out there, the one I like the least is what is often referred to as Torture Porn. This falls into that definitively. But here’s the thing. I had only ever actually watched the original Saw. Otherwise the only other Torture Porn film I’ve seen in Hostel. So I don’t know … maybe Saw didn’t become true Torture Porn until later?
Nope. Well … it wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I do think you’d throw this into the Hostel bucket. I think I just have fully desensitized myself to most horror at this point. I imagine if I watched something truly brutal I would still get physically ill, but regardless, I managed to watch Saw II with little to no difficulty.
Ah, but the movie? Perhaps I thought it was actually kind of good like the original?
Nope, the acting is terrible, the plot is dumb, the traps are stupid, Jigsaw makes no sense, all the cops are stupid, this movie is dumb. The End.
But to be more exact with it, the issue with Saw to some extent is that the traps are often just really stupid. The survivor woman from the first had the easiest task of anyone. She had to kill another person and retrieve a key, that’s it. Most people have stupid traps like … pull out all your toenails, or walk through a football field of syringes or something. Like … borderline it is like, but that would maim me? My feet will never be the same. My desire to live while maimed isn’t the same as my desire to live. They touch on this a bit in the third film. Regardless, often, the traps only really work because people waffle too much or the trap itself is dumb. That, honestly, is the worst part of the franchise. I’m a puzzle guy and the idea that the puzzles often feel either too easy or too hard is frustrating.
In this case, the trap house is a little fun, even if Donnie Wahlberg Jr. isn’t really doing it for me as the ultimate twist. I do like how the film ends in the same place as the first, and the twist itself is actually not terrible. But still, the film sets up the franchise and hooooo doggy, it isn’t super impressive.
I’m going to be honest, I don’t think this film deserves any superlatives, not even for the twist. The twist is kind of good, and the rest don’t match up. You get nothing Saw II! This is closest to BMT I think, the film is genuinely poorly made and stupid and a good example of a bad example of Torture Porn.
So what are you going to learn from Saw II? Find out in the Quiz. Cheerios,
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