SAW WEEK ON IHDB
"SAW II" released on October 28th, 2005
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Informant Michael Marks (Noam Jenkins)awakens in a room with a spike-filled mask locked to his neck, a video tape informs him that in order to unlock the device, he must cut into his eye to obtain the key, which has been sealed behind it. He sets off the timer and finds the scalpel, but cannot bring himself to retrieve the key and is killed after 60 seconds when the mask closes.
At the scene of Marks' game, Detective Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer) finds a message for her former partner, Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg), and calls him in. Despite not wanting to be involved with the case, already dealing with a divorce and estrangement from his son Daniel (Erik Knudsen), Eric reluctantly joins Kerry and Sergeant Rigg (Lyriq Bent) in leading a SWAT team to the factory which produced the lock from Marks' trap - where they find and apprehend John Kramer (Tobin Bell), the Jigsaw Killer, calmly waiting for them. Weak from cancer, Kramer indicates several computer monitors showing eight people trapped in a house; among them are Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), the only known survivor of a Jigsaw game, and Daniel. Kramer assures Eric that following his own game, simply sitting and chatting with Kramer, will see Daniel returned to him unharmed. At Kerry's urging, Eric agrees in order to buy time for the tech team to arrive and trace the video signal.
The victims in the house - Xavier (Franky G), Laura Hunter (Beverly Marsh), Jonas Singer (Glenn Plummer), Addison Corday (Emmanuelle Vaugier), Obi Tate (Timothy Burd) and Gus Colyard (Tony Nappo) - are informed by Jigsaw's microcassette that a dealy nerve agent is slowly filling up inside and that he has hidden antidotes throughout the house for them to find; told that one is in the room's safe, and a cryptic clue is provided. They search the house for more antidotes after the room lets them out, with no success: Obi, who is revealed by tape to have helped with the abductions, is forced into a furnace to obtain two antidotes inside, but inadvertently activates the trap and is burned to death before the others can save him; In the next room, Xavier throws Amanda into a syringe-filled pit intended for himself, and though she is able to retrieve the key, he is unable to unlock the steel door behind which the antidote sits before the timer expires and he leaves out of frustration. Throughout the game, they discuss connections between them and determine that each has been jailed before; the sole exception is Daniel, who has nonetheless been arrested before.
Meanwhile, Kramer passes the time with both idle and cryptic chat, eventually telling Eric that his survival of a suicide attempt after his diagnosis is the true reason for his games. With the little time left to him, he wants to inspire in others the new appreciation for life he had found. Eric, not interested in any of this, runs out of patience and returns to the monitors. He destroys several of Kramer's documents and sketches at Kerry's suggestion, but fails to provoke Kramer. As the tech team arrives, Kramer reveals the connection between the victims: Eric has framed all of them for various crimes, and Daniel will be in danger if his identity is discovered. Matthew's watches the monitors desperately as one-by-one the occupants of the house are killed in Jigsaw's trap, leaving only Amanda, Xavier and Amanda alive. Losing patience, Eric brutally assaults Kramer and forces him to lead Eric to the house. As Eric rushes to save his son - who by now, his true identity has been learned by Xavier and is now trying to kill him - he has no idea that just as his son's test is about to end, Detective Eric Matthews' test is just about to begin!
At the scene of Marks' game, Detective Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer) finds a message for her former partner, Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg), and calls him in. Despite not wanting to be involved with the case, already dealing with a divorce and estrangement from his son Daniel (Erik Knudsen), Eric reluctantly joins Kerry and Sergeant Rigg (Lyriq Bent) in leading a SWAT team to the factory which produced the lock from Marks' trap - where they find and apprehend John Kramer (Tobin Bell), the Jigsaw Killer, calmly waiting for them. Weak from cancer, Kramer indicates several computer monitors showing eight people trapped in a house; among them are Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), the only known survivor of a Jigsaw game, and Daniel. Kramer assures Eric that following his own game, simply sitting and chatting with Kramer, will see Daniel returned to him unharmed. At Kerry's urging, Eric agrees in order to buy time for the tech team to arrive and trace the video signal.
The victims in the house - Xavier (Franky G), Laura Hunter (Beverly Marsh), Jonas Singer (Glenn Plummer), Addison Corday (Emmanuelle Vaugier), Obi Tate (Timothy Burd) and Gus Colyard (Tony Nappo) - are informed by Jigsaw's microcassette that a dealy nerve agent is slowly filling up inside and that he has hidden antidotes throughout the house for them to find; told that one is in the room's safe, and a cryptic clue is provided. They search the house for more antidotes after the room lets them out, with no success: Obi, who is revealed by tape to have helped with the abductions, is forced into a furnace to obtain two antidotes inside, but inadvertently activates the trap and is burned to death before the others can save him; In the next room, Xavier throws Amanda into a syringe-filled pit intended for himself, and though she is able to retrieve the key, he is unable to unlock the steel door behind which the antidote sits before the timer expires and he leaves out of frustration. Throughout the game, they discuss connections between them and determine that each has been jailed before; the sole exception is Daniel, who has nonetheless been arrested before.
Meanwhile, Kramer passes the time with both idle and cryptic chat, eventually telling Eric that his survival of a suicide attempt after his diagnosis is the true reason for his games. With the little time left to him, he wants to inspire in others the new appreciation for life he had found. Eric, not interested in any of this, runs out of patience and returns to the monitors. He destroys several of Kramer's documents and sketches at Kerry's suggestion, but fails to provoke Kramer. As the tech team arrives, Kramer reveals the connection between the victims: Eric has framed all of them for various crimes, and Daniel will be in danger if his identity is discovered. Matthew's watches the monitors desperately as one-by-one the occupants of the house are killed in Jigsaw's trap, leaving only Amanda, Xavier and Amanda alive. Losing patience, Eric brutally assaults Kramer and forces him to lead Eric to the house. As Eric rushes to save his son - who by now, his true identity has been learned by Xavier and is now trying to kill him - he has no idea that just as his son's test is about to end, Detective Eric Matthews' test is just about to begin!
Jigsaw: Greetings... and welcome. I trust that you are all wondering where you are. I can assure you that while your location is not important, what these walls offer for your IS important... salvation, if you earn it. 3 hours from now the door to this house will open. Unfortunately, you only have 2 hours to live. Right now, you are breathing in a deadly nerve agent. You've been breathing it since you've arrived here. Those of you familiar with the Tokyo subway attacks will know its devastating effects on the human body. The only way to overcome it and walk out that door is to find an antidote. Several are hidden around this house. One is inside the safe in front of you. You all posses the combination to the safe. Think hard... the numbers are in the back of your mind. The clue to their order can be found "over the rainbow". Once you realize what you all have in common, you will gain a better understanding of why you're here. X marks the spot for that clue, so look carefully. Let the game begin.
Top: Using a clue found at a Jigsaw crime scene, Detective's Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer) and Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) are led to a warehouse where (above) they find John Kramer (Tobin Bell) waiting for them!
With the enormous success of Saw, both critical and at the box office, Lionsgate immediately green lit a sequel, with a planned release for Halloween the following year. But by then, Saw's creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell were already working on their next picture, Dead Silence for Universal Pictures, and were unavailable. At that time, music video director Darren Lynn Bousman had just completed a script for his first film, The Desperate, and was pitching it to studios - who all told him the script was "too Saw-ish"! After trying for years to get The Desperate made but being told repeatedly that it was too violent, finally a German studio eventually approached him with an offer to produce the film for $1 million because they suspected Saw (which was becoming a hit at Sundance) might blow out big and they wanted to capitalize on its success. Just as they were looking for a cinematographer, the American cinematographer David A. Armstrong, who had worked on Saw, arrived on the scene and suggested showing the script to Saw producer Gregg Hoffman. Hoffman read the script and called Bousman wanting to produce The Desperate, but when Hoffman showed the script to his partners Mark Burg and Oren Koules, the two decided that The Desperate was the starting script they needed for Saw II and two months later, Bousman was flown to Toronto to direct.
With input from Wan, Whannell briefly returned to polish the script to bring it into the Saw universe, but kept the characters, traps and deaths from The Desperate script. Bousman said, "But you could read the script for The Desperate and watch Saw II, and you would not be able to draw a comparison". Wan and Whannell would serve as executive producers on the sequel, with most of the previous film's crew members also returning, including: editor Kevin Greutert, cinematographer Armstrong, and composer Charlie Clouser. Saw II also began the long standing Saw-tradition where 0nly those key cast and crew members who were involved in the film's ending were given the full script; the rest received only the first 88 pages.
Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, and Dina Meyer reprises their roles from the first film - John Kramer aka Jigsaw, Amanda Young, Detective Allison Kerry respectively - and were joined by actor Donnie Wahlberg playing the main protagonist, Detective Eric Matthews (Wahlberg incidentally would also play a detective in Wan's movie Dead Silence). Henry Rollins was originally cast to play the role of the brutal Xavier, but to scheduling conflicts he was replaced with Franky G. in the role. Actors Emmanuelle Vaugier, Glenn Plummer, Beverley Mitchell, Tony Nappo, and Timothy Burd were cast as fellow house-prisoners, Addison Corday, Jonas Singer, Laura Hunter, Gus Colyard, and Obi Tate. Then 17-year old actor Erik Knudsen was also cast as Matthew's rebellious son Daniel, with Lyriq Bent appearing for the first time as Lieutenant Daniel Rigg.
With input from Wan, Whannell briefly returned to polish the script to bring it into the Saw universe, but kept the characters, traps and deaths from The Desperate script. Bousman said, "But you could read the script for The Desperate and watch Saw II, and you would not be able to draw a comparison". Wan and Whannell would serve as executive producers on the sequel, with most of the previous film's crew members also returning, including: editor Kevin Greutert, cinematographer Armstrong, and composer Charlie Clouser. Saw II also began the long standing Saw-tradition where 0nly those key cast and crew members who were involved in the film's ending were given the full script; the rest received only the first 88 pages.
Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, and Dina Meyer reprises their roles from the first film - John Kramer aka Jigsaw, Amanda Young, Detective Allison Kerry respectively - and were joined by actor Donnie Wahlberg playing the main protagonist, Detective Eric Matthews (Wahlberg incidentally would also play a detective in Wan's movie Dead Silence). Henry Rollins was originally cast to play the role of the brutal Xavier, but to scheduling conflicts he was replaced with Franky G. in the role. Actors Emmanuelle Vaugier, Glenn Plummer, Beverley Mitchell, Tony Nappo, and Timothy Burd were cast as fellow house-prisoners, Addison Corday, Jonas Singer, Laura Hunter, Gus Colyard, and Obi Tate. Then 17-year old actor Erik Knudsen was also cast as Matthew's rebellious son Daniel, with Lyriq Bent appearing for the first time as Lieutenant Daniel Rigg.
Jigsaw: Hello, Xavier, I want to play a game. It's similar to the game you play as a drug dealer, the game of giving hope to the desperate. I think we can agree that your situation is desperate, so I'm going to offer you hope. By entering this room, you have started a timer on the door in front of you. When the timer runs out the door will be locked forever, locking away the antidote inside it. If you want to find the key, you will have to crawl through the same squalor that your customers have. I'll give you one hint where to find it.
[Xavier and Daniel move a bed frame, revealing a pit full of hypodermic syringes beneath]
Jigsaw: It will be like finding a needle in a haystack
[laughs]
Top: Trapped inside Jigsaw's deadly house is a previous survivor, Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith);
Above: Also trapped with her is the brutal Xavier (Franky G), hooker Addison Corday (Emmanuelle Vaugier) and arsonist Obi Tate (Timothy Burd)
David Hackl, the film's production designer, took three weeks to construct 27 sets on a single sound stage at Toronto's Cinespace Film Studios, with production beginning on May 2, 2005. With a $4 million budget, the production team upgraded Jigsaw's Billy the Puppet with remote-controlled eyes and a servo-driven mouth (the previous puppet was originally created by Wan out of paper towel rolls and papier-mâché!). In Bousman's original script, he came up with an idea whereby a character's hands would get stuck in some sort of vessel and this resulted in the Hand Trap. It proved to be a challenge but after much discussion, Hackl, property master Jim Murray and art director Michele Brady came up with a suitable design. They arranged a glass box suspended by chains from the ceiling which contained a hypodermic needle with the antidote and which had two hand-holes on the underside. As soon as Vaugier's character Addison put her hands into the holes razor blades would close in on her hands and any attempt to withdraw from the trap would cause her to bleed to death. In order for the trap to be used safely, the prop builders made the handcuffs move inside the box and fake blades that would retract from the actress's hands, thus allowing her to slide her hands out.
Before deciding to place Addison in the razor box trap, the creators and writers discussed (on a DVD commentary) that they had originally intended for her to end up in a different trap. Addison would wake up shackled at the wrists to a chair, with razors planted against her wrists to dig into her flesh if she tried to remove her hands. Her tape would talk about her using her looks to survive (implying she is a prostitute), stating that she would have to sacrifice and scar them if she wanted to escape. The only way to release her hands from the razor shackles would be to burn her face against a waffle iron-like grill that was in front of her. After struggling and cutting up her wrists, Addison would then finally slam her face against the grill, releasing her cuffs and letting her go free, but with a horrendously scarred face. The trap was not used, but a variation was used in Saw IV (2007), with the victim - Cecil Adams - having to push their face through two columns of knives. If done successfully, this would release the wrist locks, but leave the victim with a severely lacerated face.
In Saw II's most memorable trap, The Needle Pit, Smith's character Amanda is thrown into a pit of needles to find a key. In order for this to be done safely, four people, over a period of four days, removed the needle tips from syringes and replaced them with fiber optic tips and coating them with Gelatin and a little water make the syringes more movable and slippery. Eventually, they modified a total of 120,000 fake needles. The creators and writers had originally thought of having Amanda be forced to dig through a bathtub full of the syringes, but decided it wouldn't be enough, instead wanting it on a grander scale, and after thinking of the pit in the middle of the room, they intended for Amanda to land up to her neck in the needles as if it were a pool, but realized that it would be impossible for her to sink into such a pool, along with the fact that getting enough needles would have taken too long as it took the production team a long time to get as many needles as they had. While shooting the Needle Pit scene, a handful of real needles fell into the pit thus causing the crew to halt filming and find the needles before filming could commence. Smith was also pregnant during filming, but had kept it a secret from everyone, including the director and producers. Her daughter, however, gave the secret away one day during lunch with Bousman, who was immensely impressed at Smith's dedication to the project under the circumstances.
Before deciding to place Addison in the razor box trap, the creators and writers discussed (on a DVD commentary) that they had originally intended for her to end up in a different trap. Addison would wake up shackled at the wrists to a chair, with razors planted against her wrists to dig into her flesh if she tried to remove her hands. Her tape would talk about her using her looks to survive (implying she is a prostitute), stating that she would have to sacrifice and scar them if she wanted to escape. The only way to release her hands from the razor shackles would be to burn her face against a waffle iron-like grill that was in front of her. After struggling and cutting up her wrists, Addison would then finally slam her face against the grill, releasing her cuffs and letting her go free, but with a horrendously scarred face. The trap was not used, but a variation was used in Saw IV (2007), with the victim - Cecil Adams - having to push their face through two columns of knives. If done successfully, this would release the wrist locks, but leave the victim with a severely lacerated face.
In Saw II's most memorable trap, The Needle Pit, Smith's character Amanda is thrown into a pit of needles to find a key. In order for this to be done safely, four people, over a period of four days, removed the needle tips from syringes and replaced them with fiber optic tips and coating them with Gelatin and a little water make the syringes more movable and slippery. Eventually, they modified a total of 120,000 fake needles. The creators and writers had originally thought of having Amanda be forced to dig through a bathtub full of the syringes, but decided it wouldn't be enough, instead wanting it on a grander scale, and after thinking of the pit in the middle of the room, they intended for Amanda to land up to her neck in the needles as if it were a pool, but realized that it would be impossible for her to sink into such a pool, along with the fact that getting enough needles would have taken too long as it took the production team a long time to get as many needles as they had. While shooting the Needle Pit scene, a handful of real needles fell into the pit thus causing the crew to halt filming and find the needles before filming could commence. Smith was also pregnant during filming, but had kept it a secret from everyone, including the director and producers. Her daughter, however, gave the secret away one day during lunch with Bousman, who was immensely impressed at Smith's dedication to the project under the circumstances.
[last lines]
Amanda: What is the cure for Cancer, Eric? The cure for death itself. The answer is immortality. By creating a legacy, by living a life worth remembering, you become immortal. So now we find the tables are turned. It is I who will carry on John's work after he dies, and you are my first test subject. Now you are locked away, helpless and alone.
[Appears at door frame]
Amanda: Game Over.
[She slams to door shut]
Top and Above: The brutal games begin, with Amanda being thrown into the Needle Pit, and Addison caught in the Hand Trap!
Reportedly, "four or five" alternate endings were shot in order to keep the ending a surprise, before production on Saw II wrapped on 25th May. While locking the picture, Bousman and editor Greutert excised an entire subplot from the final cut, which involved Eric Matthews having had an affair with Detective Kerry, which precipitated the end of his marriage and led to the strained relationship between him and Daniel. The only remaining hint of this back-story is when Kerry remarks that she is not going to let Eric lose his son for the second time; implying Matthew's ex-wife won the custody of Daniel during their divorce. With music and sound recording being completed in July and Saw II locked on July 16, the final film was delivered on 9th September, literally just 8-months after Bousman's script was first read by Hoffman!
Saw II opened with $31.7 million on 3,879 screens across 2,949 theaters, where the three-day Halloween opening weekend set a Lionsgate record. The sequel eventually grossed $87 million in the US and Canada, with a further $60 million worldwide receipts, the film is the highest-grossing film of the Saw series and Lionsgate's fourth highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada, with over $147 million box office gross.
Saw II opened with $31.7 million on 3,879 screens across 2,949 theaters, where the three-day Halloween opening weekend set a Lionsgate record. The sequel eventually grossed $87 million in the US and Canada, with a further $60 million worldwide receipts, the film is the highest-grossing film of the Saw series and Lionsgate's fourth highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada, with over $147 million box office gross.
Above: Debut writer and director, Darren Lynn Bouseman on set with Shawnee Smith
Saw II received generally mixed reviews from critics, who praised the acting, particularly the performances of Bell and Wahlberg, while criticizing the gruesome nature of the story. Robert Koehler of Variety gave the film a negative review, saying "cooking up new Rube Goldberg torture contraptions isn't enough to get Saw II out of the shadow of its unnerving predecessor". Gregory Kirschling of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B minus, saying "Saw II is just barely a better B flick than Saw" and that both films are "more clever and revolting than they are actually chilling". He praised Bell's performance as Jigsaw, saying "As the droopy-lidded maniac in the flesh, Tobin Bell is, for all the film's gewgaws, Saw II's sturdiest horror, a Terence Stamp look-alike who calls to mind a seedy General Zod lazily overseeing the universe from his evildoer's lair". Kevin Crust of the Los Angeles Times gave the film a positive review, calling Saw II a "worthy follow-up to its grisly predecessor". He said the story was "much more focused on an endgame than the original film. There are fewer credibility gaps and there are plenty of reversals to satisfy fans". He criticized the use of numerous flashbacks, saying that it "rob[s] us of the pleasure of actually remembering for ourselves". Empire's Kim Newman gave the film three out of five stars, writing that the film improves upon Saw's "perverse fascination with Seven-style murders and brutally violent puzzles" and that Jigsaw's intellectual games make "Hannibal Lecter look like the compiler of The Sun's quick crossword". He ended his reviews saying, "Morally dubious it may be, but this gory melange of torture, terror and darkly humorous depravity appeals to the sick puppy within us all".
For IHdb's review of the remaining films in the Saw franchise - as well as video extras, trailers, and much, much more - be sure to Follow Us on our Facebook Page during our exclusive Saw Week on IHdb!
For IHdb's review of the remaining films in the Saw franchise - as well as video extras, trailers, and much, much more - be sure to Follow Us on our Facebook Page during our exclusive Saw Week on IHdb!
ROTTEN TOMATOES SCORE: 36%
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