The Modern American Horror Movie As Junk Food: Part 11: Saw 2

Now I’m not one for armchair psychiatry but it doesn’t take much to notice that the horror franchise that was far and away the most financially successful, most influential and most copied horror franchise of the decade; the film that resonated most fully with post 9/11 horror audiences, had at its center a boogeyman who was a sinister old man with health problems who eluded authorities with preternatural skill, communicated with the larger world through videos that broadcast his twisted world view and philosophy, lived in what can only be described as a bunker and had an army of fanatical devoted followers willing to commit atrocities and die for him.

Nope no real world corollaries here.

Because make no mistake love it or loathe it Saw was the 800 pound gorilla of the horror genre for all of the 00’s. You might not think it’s worth a whole lot, and most of the time you wouldn’t exactly be wrong. But to try and ignore it would just be foolish.

If Eli Roth deserves credit for reintroducing R Rated horror as a commercially viable  format than James Wan and Leigh Whannell were the first to provide a major hit. That said, as with Friday The Thirteenth I’m choosing to write about the second installment of the franchise as it actually delivers a much more accurate portrait of the series as a whole than the original.

The first Saw is as much a detective film as a horror film. It’s a film that clearly is using Se7en as it’s template. Spending just as much time with the detectives working the case and Danny Glover as a cop who has been driven round the bend by Jigsaw as it does on Jigsaw’s various games and the main showdown between a shameless overacting Cary Elwes and a hacksaw. Jigsaw himself is hardly seen in the film, manipulating things by proxy and with the occasional Deep Red rip off.

Saw 2 on the other hand establishes the template that the rest of the franchise would follow . A spectacular opening death trap unconnected from the rest of the film where a one off character dies in some spectacularly gory and ironic fashion (for those of you unfamiliar with Jigsaw’s raison d’etre, inspired by his own terminal cancer, involves snaring his victims in sadistic contraptions and traps in which they must mutilate themselves or others in a usually ironic way in order to survive thus either teaching them a very important lesson, or killing them. For example “You have neglected your dental hygiene now you must rip out your own teeth with a claw hammer before this dental drill goes through your skull and into your brain. Most people never really appreciate what it is to chew.”) We’re then introduced to our main character who is soon trapped by Jigsaw in some untenable but survivable situation. A trap that is only truly closed on them when either A) It is revealed that they have more skeletons in their closet than we were led to believe. And/Or B) They ignore some crucial information that they were explicitly told not to.

While this formula began to break down almost immediately as the foreknowledge that Jigsaw required for each of his traps to work increased exponentially with each entry. Quickly going from improbable to insulting somewhere about half way through part 3. But on its first run through it’s hard to deny that it was reasonably effective. For a franchise that to many horror fans represents everything lazy and derivative about the horror films of the decade, Saw II works surprisingly well if one is able to lay down the baggage of the approximate bajillion films that followed.

The film follows a cop played by Donnie Wahlberg who manages to capture Jigsaw only to find out that Jigsaw has kidnapped his son and trapped him in a house that is filled with both Nerve Gas, and people that Wahlberg sent to prison with planted evidence. (That would be the “A” part of the formula) Jigsaw tells Wahlberg that if he simply sits and talks with Jigsaw for two hours his son will be safe. But as things grow more and more dire on the video feed coming from the house (it is naturally filled with death traps and Jigsaw’s morality games as well)  Wahlberg reverts to his old ways and attempts to beat the location of his Son out of Jigsaw (that would be the “B” portion of the formula.)

The film cuts between the two locations with an impressive amount of tension building at both. The death traps in the house have neither lost their shock value, nor reached the ludicrous levels of convolution they would in later installments. Indeed the film contains what is perhaps the franchise’s most unbearable moment, involving a pit full of dirty hyperdermic needles and a key hidden at its bottom. And Bell’s lowkey manipulations feel genuinely unpredictable. Add in not one but two genuinely well done plot twists and you got yourself a pretty decent B-Horror film.

Really Tobin Bell deserves much of the credit for just how well the movie works. As mentioned, he was hardly in the first film, but is on center stage for at least half of the sequels runtime. Yet his presence does not dampen his mystique one bit. With his pale emaciated frame and hushed sepulchral voice, Bell is eerily believable as a killer who is wasting away from the inside out. No matter how much of an upper hand he has on his victims there is no escaping the fact that Jigsaw himself is caught in his own death trap from which he will ultimately not escape.

There is something inherently disquieting about being killed by something weaker than yourself and Bell certainly fits the bill. Dubious morality, apparent psychic ability, access to unlimited resources and tracts of soundproof urban real estate aside, he spends more of the franchise than not as a corpse.

The Saw franchise imploded somewhere around the middle of Saw 3, despite the fact that it managed to lumber on like an unstoppable master plan set in motion by a deceased madman for four more money grabbing installments. Much of the problem lay in the fact that unlike other horror films which try to make their various entries as stand alone as possible, Saw embraced it’s continuity to a degree that was positively unhealthy. Every installment found itself so entwined with its previous films plots that eventually spark notes became a prerequisite for watching each film. This might be fine if the Saw franchise had, say memorable characters, gripping stories, or some kind of larger narrative arc. But alas it did not.

Best for those curious about the franchise to stick to when it was (relatively simple). Make no mistake, Saw 2 isn’t exactly a great horror movie. It cheats worse than a riverboat gambler with a waxed handlebar mustache and a derringer. But aside from one reaction shot that is not strictly speaking “possible” given the laws of physics and time as we know them, Saw 2 actually cheats pretty well. And that you may agree is half the battle.