TheLittleSongbird Finally saw all the 'Saw' films prior to seeing 'Jigsaw' (as part of my wanting to see as many 2017 films as possible this year, during a quieter and less intensive period). Heard a lot about the films, good and bad, but wanted to see them for myself to know what to expect.The films as an overall series are a very mixed bag. The original 'Saw' had a great premise and while it was problematic it was still pretty good and one of the best in the series. Its first sequel is one of its few follow-ups to be just as good and contain what made its predecessor click as well as it did and, while it is full of its own problems, it is one of the better sequels by quite some way. It is very easy to see why people will dislike it, and the 'Saw' films in general, and no it is not because of the full throttle horror-like elements that are not for the faint hearted.'Saw II's' story is just as weak in the dialogue, here quite cheesy, half-baked and repetitive as well as at times rambling and sometimes irrelevant. Actually it's worse, at least the dialogue in the first 'Saw' had some tightness and intrigue, even if they didn't come consistently. The credibility lapses here are just as numerous and just as big, although the character behaviour here doesn't frustrate as much, nothing as bad as that for Danny Glover's character.Its twists are not as bold and are uneven in execution. Some of them are very clever and devilish, like the apprehending of Jigsaw, didn't see that one coming. Others are plain stupid and pretty predictable. The ending is a let-down, instead of the shocking one of the original this one was hideously contrived. The characters, other than Jigsaw and Eric, are basically cliché-ridden filler and are either bland, irritating or both.However, really liked that 'Saw II' was visually more elaborate and slicker than the production values of the first with much tighter, more audacious and more professional-looking editing. Even if one does miss somewhat the effectively claustrophobic feel. The music is eerily unsettling.Despite its ridiculousness, the story is also edge-of-your-seat and highly atmospheric. A lot of it delights and disturbs, with some truly imaginative traps and uncompromisingly brutal demises. The novelty has not worn off yet. The direction is serviceable and once again Jigsaw's modus operandi, impulse and justification sets him apart from most characters of his type.Saying that Donnie Wahlberg is a huge improvement over Cary Elwes is saying a lot, really not that hard to be better and one would have to be bottom of the barrel SyFy/The Asylum-level to be worse. Tobin Bell is terrifying as one of the most iconic villains of the past twenty years or so (or at least to me). Apart from Franky G the actors don't fare shabbily.In short, very uneven but for a horror sequel not bad at all. 6/10 Bethany Cox

lorcan-61881 Saw was a big hit back in the year of 2004,so big,that even before the film was released some dude Darren something something was making Saw II,which is about another group of guilty people who've done guilty things as they desperately try to get out of Jigsaw's twisted games. So,when I saw Saw II,which was'int too long really ago,even though I saw all the others,I did'int think too much of it and I still don't. Saw II is nothing really great,in fact,I don't really see why people are saying its the best in the franchise,like sure,its got some really fun traps and some really cool characters,but I personally felt it was just another excuse to make another money making sequel,BUT,I don't actually think Darren wanted to make this actually crap,I could see some cool things in Saw II that like the first film were really cool,as,like I said,the traps..but,this film is OK. Saw II's OK everybody!

a_chinn Disappointing sequel to the surprisingly quality first film. "Saw" had good plotting and a solid mystery, along with a lot of memorably grizzly horror. This sequel instead focuses primarily on the grizzly horror (the pit of dirty drug needles is by far the film's most memorable moment and unsettling) and really doesn't have much of a story outside of how-are-these-people-going-escape-Jigsaw's-deadly-traps? The film does offer one unexpected twist at the end, which led to several more sequels, but for the most part, this film set the formula for the many sequels, which was simply a new set of victims and anew set of overly elaborate traps. That was enough to hold my interest, but it's not really enough to call this a good horror film. Donnie Wahlberg, Beverley Mitchell, Shawnee Smith, Tobin Bell, Glenn Plummer, and Dina Meyer provide the solid cast.

GL84 Attempting to track down the Jigsaw killer, a detective and his team's raid on a hideout reveals his son's involvement in a deadly game with other victims inside a house filled with traps and must rescue him before succumbing to the traps.This here ended up being quite the overall bland effort here. As with the rest of the franchise, the biggest problem here is with the feeling of his own brand of punishment being too far self-centered that there's little to gleam from the ethics and morality found here which tends to come away rather wholeheartedly. This one spends so much time trying to pontificate over doling out a sense of righteousness to his actions that there's just nothing that can be taken from who he's specifically targeting with this one seemingly bent on trying to bring about the fact that what's happening is of a great good to the individual. The gathered group is all supposedly tied together with the detective yet nothing here is really all that positive about why they're being targeted. Once it's discovered what the connection is, that makes his attempt at teaching them lessons seem even more foolhardy and suspect here with a simply lame reasoning to suspect that he's truly in trouble. Not only that, it's dropped way too late into the film anyway which makes this seem all the more confusing and pointless which renders this one irritatingly non-essential about that twist. Coupled with a series of utterly baffling character decisions that render this one rather non-descript and a bland first half that tends to leave all the kills here in the second half, there's a lot of flaws and problems here. While these here all hold this one down, there's very little here that's worthwhile. All of that positive force here comes from the traps on display, which are quite brutal in their execution if completely lacking in their connection to the types of traps usually featured in the series. There's some rather cruel and brutal traps here, from the crawl through the incinerator or the trap-door pit full of needles that's quite squirm-inducing. The other fine action in the last-half here as everyone turns on each other to get out of the house which gets interesting with some decent brawling and stalking that results in some enjoyable gore, but otherwise the flaws here are more impactful overall.Rated R: Graphic Language, Graphic Violence and children-in- jeopardy.