Sawed

I will say about Saw II that it has but a fraction of the sheer brutality and sadomasochism of Japanese counterparts like Ichi The Killer and none of the redeeming surrealism.

Saw II‘s approach to violence sits in limbo between the realistic, upsetting depictions of serial killer movies like Silence Of The Lambs and Se7en and the over-the-top, silly carnage of slasher flicks like Friday the 13th and Halloween. The film’s thin moral lesson is presented up front, and we are made to suffer along with the villain’s victims as they discover it or die horribly. These characters are just believable enough to make witnessing their torture an appalling, unentertaining affair, yet too underdeveloped to have their fate convey any substantive moral message.

To put it another way: if we are meant to watch Saw II in the prurient mode reserved for gory slasher films, it takes great callousness to set aside the emotional pain of the characters and enjoy the contrived scenarios in which they perish. If we’re meant to take the film as a morality play, it fails for all the violence the director and screenwriters are willing to stoop to. Moral disconnect runs straight from the author to the audience no matter what the presentation or perception.

I’d had enough about 20 minutes before the film’s end, when I realized that nothing was stopping me from quitting my media player and trashing the files in the disgust; such is the opportunity afforded by “alternate means of media consumption”. At least the acting was better than its laughable predecessor, although not nearly enough so to warrant Saw II being this past weekend’s top-grossing movie.

I don’t care to know how it ended, needless to say.