Saw 2 (3/5)

That crazy Jigsaw bloke is back again and this time he's taken a bunch of no-hopers and stashed them safely in a morbidly booby-trapped house. To get out and rid themselves of the deadly nerve agent being pumped into the house they'll need to complete several vice-related tasks and endure tortuous scenarios even more twisted than being tied up and left to fester at a never-ending Celine Dion concert. Leigh Whannell this time takes a back seat as co-writer and leaves the direction to rock video supremo Darren Lynn Bousman with surprisingly acceptable resus. While the central conceit may not be as original or as slick as the first movie, Saw 2 largely escapes the Law Of Diminishing Returns and delivers a far better sequel experience than you'd expect, particularly from the horror genre. Of course those who didn't see what all the fuss was about first time round aren't at risk of being converted, but for those of us who enjoyed Jigsaw's first sadistic outing Saw 2 comes as quite the treat. Have 3 out of 5 D-Units, my friend.

Craig Eastman

Alternatively...

See Saw? If you did it makes describing the follow up a lot easier, as it's much the same film with more screaming. The Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) Nutjob returns to play a few headgames with burnt out cop Eric Matthews (Marky Mark), having locked his kid in a house somewhere that's filling slowly with a nerve agent. There are antidotes for him and his co-detainees, but they'll have to go through the series' patented slightly ironic deathtraps to get them. It's still a more imaginitive slasher film than the bulk of it's genre stablemates despite the laws of diminishing returns applying in force but it's still relying on gore to shock, which it does not. Makes the fatal mistake of devoting god knows how long talking about Jiggy's motivation, utterly superfluous when we know all we need to about his character - he's a fruitloop. As a rule, and almost by definition horror flicks are soulless, joyless, base excercises in misery, and Saw II does not buck this trend. 1.6852727 / 5

Scott Morris