SAW II

Detective Eric Matthews, after discovering a cadaver tortured in a gruesome manner, manages to locate the hideout of the Jigsaw Killer, a ferocious serial killer who challenges his victims to a deadly game where their own lives are at stake. The Jigsaw Killer is a terminal cancer patient, unable to move, but in his lair, the detective and his colleagues find monitors showing eight people imprisoned in a house, among whom the detective recognizes his own son. The prisoners are subjected to a nerve gas that will kill them within the next two hours: the only way to survive is to solve the diabolical puzzles that the killer has scattered throughout the house, along with deadly traps. Detective Matthews will do everything to extract the location of the building-trap from the Jigsaw Killer. Only a year ago, the brilliant "Saw - The Jigsaw Killer" debuted in theaters, a thriller/horror revelation that immediately earned the cult label. Now "Saw" has earned a sequel (but a trilogy is rumored), perfectly faithful to the atmospheres and atrocities that delighted us with the prototype. Dirt, grime, a sense of despair and oppression were the sensations felt while observing the physical and psychological torture to which the protagonists of the first film were subjected, locked in an abandoned bathroom, the same bathroom that will return in a fleeting but terrifying scene of this sequel; and the same sick atmosphere that permeates the entire duration of "Saw 2". The house in which the eight unfortunate protagonists are trapped is riddled with dangers, deadly traps that test the ability and patience of the contestant-victims; anything can be lethal in that house: opening a door, a boiler, even looking through a peephole. The gore department is very generous, surely more suited to a horror than a simple thriller; it ingeniously ranges from perforated heads and slit throats to sublime traps that play with the viewer's nerves. At least two scenes will remain imprinted in the mind: the introduction, with the diabolical machine-mask with nails threatening the face of an unfortunate "sinner" and the terrible scene of the pool full of syringes into which one of the protagonists will be forced to jump and rummage. "Saw 2" does not limit itself to being a clever sequel of a successful product, because it manages to expand the themes already emerged in the first film and to deepen the psychology of some characters from the previous film, especially the Jigsaw Killer (still played by the talented Tobin Bell), a pathetic and suffering figure, who inspires pity and compassion rather than disgust, but at the same time, despite his condition as a terminal cancer patient, he manages to appear cruel and ingenious, the author of a plan of lucid madness free of any flaw. At the center of the story, beyond a spectacle of violence and blood, stands a clear emphasis on the relationship between parents and children, represented by the conflictual cohabitation between Detective Matthews (a convincing Donnie Wahlberg) and his son Daniel (a bland Erik Knudsen), one a prototype of a father who is too busy to educate his son, the other a rebellious boy eager to attract his father's attention. Parental relationship that will turn metaphorical, involving also the character of the Jigsaw Killer. On a technical level, one can notice a "music video-style" direction by the debutant Darren Lynn Bousman (also the screenwriter together with Leigh Whannel), very close to the equally frenetic direction of the author of the first chapter James Wan, but here we are fortunately spared that annoying sped-up editing characteristic of many sequences of the first film. The screenplay is quite solid, rich in plot twists, although heavily indebted to the plot experimented in "Cube", a claustrophobic thriller by Vincenzo Natali. Scattered throughout the film are also tasty citations (intentional and unintentional) from past horrors: the already mentioned scene of the nailed mask cannot but recall the torture instrument used in Mario Bava's classic "The Mask of the Demon"; the scene in which one of the house prisoners, looking through the peephole of the door, finds his skull perforated by a gunshot, is taken straight from Dario Argento's "Opera"; finally, even the location of the prison house, according to the Jigsaw Killer (it's "The Last House on the Left"), cites Wes Craven's famous work. In short, "Saw 2" is a film recommended especially to those who appreciated the previous chapter; while it may seem redundant and self-satisfied in the display of violence for the common viewer. It remains, however, a product of undeniable quality for the horror market. It definitely deserves half a point more.