Horror movies are less about instilling a sense of fear in the viewer these days and would much rather take the fairly easy/cop out "shock value" route (Final Destination, anyone?). This is probably attributed to my assumption that nearly all Americans suffer from some sort of Attention-Deficit Disorder and have no patience for a movie to build up momentum to legitimately scare the living bejesus out of you (Or any other movie for that matter.. )

People complained about the length of Spider-Man for Pete's sake! Movies from the 80's seem to go on all day in comparison). The last horror movie I saw that actually had me afraid was 28 Days Later. To my knowledge, that's the first time in movie history that zombies could run. That fact alone is scary (especially since I'm about as athletic as a two-toed sloth). "Saw 2" falls into the other category of the horror genre I mentioned where the main objective is to just shock, shock, and shock. Does this neccessarily make a motion picture bad?

Are you a drug addict or drug dealer? Do you have suicidal tendicies? Do you commit any crimes against society in general? If so, criminal mastermind "Jigsaw" would like to "play a game" with you! But this isn't a nice game of Operation or Shoots And Ladders.

Since you don't appreciate the body you live in, it's time to test just how badly you want to live when challenged with a task that is literally do or die. Jigsaw, an old fogey, is a truly messed up cat lol... As explained later in the movie, he was involved in a near fatal car accident after being diagnosed with cancer. He crashed in the middle of nowhere, so he could have easily laid there and died but he got up like a G. and pulled random debris from out of his chest from the impact. After hobbling his way to help, he decided to test other individual's will to survive by throwing them in all kinds of crazy situations. If you saw the first film, you'll remember how two guys were stuck in a room with ankle shackles on. The only way to escape was to pick up the saw near them and saw their foot off. If you thought that was distrubing, the sequel will most likely make you vomit. Even if you haven't seen the original, the idea is pretty self explanatory throughout the picture and doesn't require prior knowledge to enjoy. There are subtle references to the predecessor, but nothing that will leave you "Nathena lost" (lmao, that's my new term for being totally confused at a movie).

"Saw 2" wastes no time in throwing you into the middle of one of Jiggy's latest games. On the menu today is "The Death Mask". The poor idiot pictured above is your normal "snitch" and we know how much society hates tattle tellers! Lucky for us, Mr. Saw hates them too so we get to be entertained for 4 minutes. White boy was apparently knocked out long enough for this psycho to get that crazy looking contraption on him. He only has a short amount of time to find the key to stop the time released closing of the mask (which has spikes on the insides which obviously result in instant death) but here's the kicker -- the key is in his right eye socket lol. To get it, he'll have to use the scapel supplied to him and dig it out. Not fun, but it's the only way to escape.

Time slips by and the guy doesn't scoop out his eye ball, so the mask closes resulting in a pretty cool looking death. To be honest though, this whole opening scene almost made me turn off my DVD player cuz I didn't know if he was going to cut his eye open or not. I was also cringing while sitting on my living room sofa, so there's the "shock vs. fear" point I brought up earlier. In fact, I found a lot of the scenes are more comical than disturbing, but it's nothing like Final Destination... which I swear tries to be comedy sometimes. I think I just have a twisted sense of humor, so don't take my opinion on that seriously lol.

The story isn't really important, but to save a lot of typing on my end the basic jist of the whole deal is that the son of a cop in the film is one of the newest test subjects for Jigsaw. The "Super Dad" (who's played by the brother of Mark "Hangin' Tough" Whalberg lol) wants his son back from Jiggy even though the pair have had some disagreements in the past. One line I liked that's said by Jigs is something like "Funny how you forgive all of somebody's sins when death is near". Marky Mark Version 2's son isn't the only person caught in the latest game. There are atleast 5 others who are trapped in an abandoned house filled with all kinds of death traps. All the doors are locked and will automatically open within 3 hours, but the catch is some funky monkey gas is being pumped into the house that will kill you under 2 hours. By surviving these traps they'll be able to get a key out of the house. What follows is pretty entertaining, so I won't spoil it for you if you still haven't seen this yet. I'll leave you with this picture and you can use your imagination for the rest of the sadistic things:

Jigsaw can't even be seen as a real bad guy. The messages he tries to send are good natured, but are brutally executed. You should love life and live it to the fullest.. A simple thing like being able to inhale oxygen shouldn't even be taken for granted (Jigs is hooked up to a respirator). He wants you know that everything can end in an instant. Don't mean to get all sappy on you folks, but it's true lol. 

The ending is a big ass twist, so it's hard to give my trademark (insanely) in-depth plot synopsis without ruining the whole thing for you. Overall, it's a good movie and succeeds in shocking the holy hell out of you repeatedly and is even better than the first film. It's worth a viewing, but sadly not a purchase. You can only watch these kinds of things once (or twice if you have a web site and review these things, but I'm in the minority on that one haha). I'm kind of mad I bought it on DVD instead of downloading it, but what can I say... Me + a pocket of money + Best Buy = a purchased DVD everytime lol. 

The DVD extras aren't anything to get excited over either. The featurettes on how they did the special effects kind of spoils the whole effect in my opinion. I know it's a motion picture and everything is fake, but telling me how they did certain things took the magic away in hindsight. There are commentaries, but I rarely have the attention span to watch a film again with a bunch of idiots blabbing about the film. The only running commentary I enjoyed was Resident Evil because none of them took it seriously lol. Getting back to Saw 2 though, that's about it for extras. You get a few trailers for upcoming Lions Gate DVD releases (like Audition), but that's basically it.

Since you can run through the entire disc in a few hours, I suggest renting this on Halloween or downloading the DVD rip off isohunt.com or torrentspy.com. This is why I'm here, lol, so you don't waste your money like me. So to recap, the film gets a thumbs up and the DVD gets a thumbs down. Overall it's a thumbs in the middle. With Saw 3 out now, if you really want the DVD of 2, I suggest wait until that's on DVD because you know they're gonna release a 3-pack Uber-Supremo-Power Bomb- STF-Chicken Wing Facelock-Edition soon.

Fuck DVD.

If you want intelligent horror, I don't know what to tell you lol. I don't think it exists anymore.