If ever a sequel was released which can be enjoyed without seeing the original, it is Darren Lynn Bousman’s “Saw II.”
On the surface, “Saw II” is a standard cop thriller. Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) must capture a sadistic serial killer known as Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who tortures his victims in tests during which they must torture themselves in order to live. As one example, the opening kill is a police informant named Michael Marks (Noam Jenkins) who must scoop one of his peeping eyes out of his head in order to stop a spike-filled mask from closing around his skull. He fails due to a lack of nerve and dies, thereby both establishing Jigsaw’s sadistic practices and Matthews’ preferred type of lowlife.
Matthews, after all, was Marks’ police manager. For this reason, he accompanies the SWAT team that takes Jigsaw down. Little could Matthews suspect that the wily serial killer has already kidnapped his son Daniel (Erik Knudsen), along with a series of other criminals who he ominously hints are connected to Matthews. What follows is an incisive character study that ranks among Wahlberg’s best performances, as the young cop tries to match wits with a man who literally controls his child’s fate. The tense, terse interactions between Wahlberg and Bell rank among the best I’ve heard in any dramatic context. You have, in Matthews, a man who desperately wants to save his juvenile delinquent son after ending his exchange with him on a cruel note. By contrast, there is the enigmatic Jigsaw — soon identified as engineer John Kramer — a man dying of cancer. Prior to “Saw II,” we knew nothing about his backstory other than that. Now we learn that he is an intellectual: Sadistic, yes, but also philosophical, and not without a cleverness that makes him more cunning in any context than his adversaries might want to admit.
Unlike every other “Saw” movie, the first one did not explicitly feature Bell’s Kramer as the official Jigsaw Killer. It is impossible to assess what the series would have been had it decided to recast the titular character after the famous twist ending in the original 2004 entry. Because of Bell’s “Oh yes, there will be blood” performance (one I’m convinced inspired the title of the classic Paul Thomas Anderson Oscar-bait period piece two years later), “Saw” fans almost take it for granted that Bell IS Jigsaw. Yet everything we associate with his Jigsaw performance — the brooding intellectual, the menacing puzzle-maker — comes from the second chapter. Even the menacing voice that we hear in Part One lacks meaningful context until it is supplied in Part Two.
Before Matthews can arrest Kramer, he can capture Daniel along with six other criminals: prostitute Addison (Emmanuelle Vaugier), white-collar criminal Gus (Tony Nappo), drug dealer Jonas (Glenn Plummer), shoplifter Laura (Beverley Mitchell), murderer Obi (Timothy Burd) and Xavier (Franky G). It’s a classic cops-versus-robbers melodrama (Matthews versus his past collars) synthesized with both a serial killer thriller (Jigsaw has a gauntlet of traps that the “robbers” must go through, including the “cop’s” own son) and a stylized ’00s slasher film.
The result is immensely entertaining, especially when you consider an ending so clever it was recycled by at least two other sequels. (I won’t elaborate except to say that it forces you to question your understanding of the series’ chronology itself.) The bottom line is that, when I think of a quintessential “Saw” movie, I don’t think of the first film. In that installment (helmed by the talented James Wan), we didn’t have Bell’s “Jigsaw” as the official serial killer. For that reason, the series feels incomplete, even toothless.
You need Bell. You need John Kramer as the known Jigsaw. For that reason, “Saw II” is a staple in any horror movie fan’s diet. If you want to know “Saw,” you have to know “Saw II.”