I was not exactly a fan of the original “Saw” but I did recognise that it had some merits. “Saw II” has a larger budget, more characters, more deadly traps and more revelations than the first film but it’s the excess that makes it feel cluttered. I felt that there was too much going on in the first movie but here, the problem is exacerbated.

Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg “Ransom”, “Dreamcatcher”) has located and arrested Jigsaw (Tobin Bell “The Firm”), an infamous serial killer that like to play ‘games’ with his victims. However, Jigsaw reveals that he has captured a group of people (including Detective Matthew’s son). The police discover that they have only a few hours to rescue the hostages.

The first “Saw” movie kept Jigsaw rather mysterious while “Saw II” decides to give him a lot more screen time and explain more about his backstory. Like Michael Myers from “Halloween”, sometimes the less you know about the killer, the more interesting they are. We are just given way too much info for Jigsaw to be as intriguing as he was the first time around. The hostage characters are all pretty stupid and do not really work together all that well. The characters in the first “Saw” were substantially smarter.

Prepare to see people stabbed in the face by spikes, slice their own skin off, get shot in the face and savagely beat other people. This is a very violent movie although the idiocy of the characters makes some of it less disturbing than it should be. The twist in the first movie was pretty darn good but the big one at the end in this movie is a little lame by comparison. If you really liked the first “Saw” movie then this one is more of the same.