Saw II: Critic Reviews

The contest is close, but Saw II is just barely a better B flick than Saw.

Saw II, directed by a newcomer, Darren Lynn Bousman, delivers practically humorless frights and hair-raising tension.

Essentially, this is one more movie that, regardless of its setting or even planet, exists to knock off its cast members one by one.

The most horrifying moment is saved for last: when you realize things have been obviously set up for yet another sequel.

Saw II is not for the faint of heart. It's for the foolish of wallet.

What's worth noting is how much greater deliberation was given to the marketing than the screenplay of this cursory dud, rushed to theaters exactly a year after its amusing predecessor.

At the very least, with Saw II, you get what you pay for.

Even hard-core horror can go too far. Saw II is as punishing as it gets. It's effective, all right, but to what end? Certainly not entertainment.

Saw II goes to great lengths to be smart and not just viscerally but intellectually provocative. An admirable ambition, but it just makes the movie even more silly when it fails so utterly in the effort.

No point in labeling this a horror film. This is a sadism film, and while all good and great horror films know what sadism tastes like, a sadism film settles for nothing of lasting, imaginative horror.

In a fun house like this the elaborate tortures seem to leave behind the real world of pain and suffering for the realm of slapstick; they're the kind of horrors that make you scream and laugh at the same time.

This is entertainment?

The serpentine plot is logical; the acting is passable and the film creates a palpable atmosphere of paranoia and tension.

Saw II lacks quite a bit of the cutting edge that made the original such a guilty, grisly pleasure last year.

Although not as clever as the original, Saw II takes its cuts.

Cooking up new Rube Goldberg torture contraptions isn't enough to get Saw II out of the shadow of its unnerving predecessor.

Saw II has teeth, and this house-of-horrors franchise has legs, though they're manacled to the radiator.

Saw II only has one ambition -- to make us squirm. And it does. Just don't be surprised if you need to switch to an electric razor after this.

Quite possibly Saw II sheds enough blood to satisfy horror aficionados.

I saw Saw, I saw Saw II, and I have lived to tell about it. Aren't you glad?

If the machinations don't quite make the startling impact of those in the original, they also far outshine the pedestrian mayhem on display in the current horror glut.

For the most part the film succeeds in producing a frightening Halloween weekend experience.

The film doesn't take the direction most sequels do and manages to adequately follow up the original.