The 2020-2021 Film Journal Entry #25: "Saw II"

2020-2021 Film Journal Entry #25

by Xavier E. Palacios

"Saw II"

2 out of 5

Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman

Premise: In this first sequel in the Saw series, the serial killer, "Jigsaw" (Tobin Bell), continues his quest to psychologically torture abducted victims with ironic and bizarrely malicious traps and challenges to reawaken their primal desire for survival and, in some cases, illustrate their fatal flaws. He has kidnapped several disparate individuals and trapped them in a house filled with unexpected, bloody tricks. One such victim is the son of Detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Walhberg), who is the latest target for Jigsaw's demented teachings. With his fellow police officers, Matthews must uncover the location of the abductees before they, at the least, die in two hours of nerve gas poisoning. However, confronting a dying Jigsaw, a.k.a. John Kramer, at his base of operations and Matthew's own secrets will not be easy, as nothing with Jigsaw is as it seems. With poor, juvenile filmmaking, this unhappy film is inoffensive with some appreciated moments of creativity.

"R"

My Thoughts

Unsurprisingly, I am not a fan of the Saw series' gimmick in watching poor bastards forced into psychotic, often mechanical traps of great torture and miserable pain as some psychological lesson on their character flaws. This horror style is now deemed as "torture porn". Yet I will not take some moral high ground against Saw II. After all, I am human, and finding pleasure in others' misery, simulated or not, is a part of my DNA. Nor will I begin this entry pronouncing my confusion as to how anyone could find the slightest bit of entertainment from this premise. Instead, I will direct a lingering question towards myself: how come this kind of violent entertainment is not pleasing to me while other forms are?

Frankly speaking, I am enamored by many, many stories that showcase violence and death as entertainment. As much as I adore them and believe with great evidence their important, positive impact upon myself and the world, one of the sincere problems I have with the super-hero genre is the focus on violence. People in costumes go about saving the day through violence, and while that statement is not always true, (like with the awesome Ms. Marvel, a.k.a. Kamala Khan), the stories do often involve punching, kicking, energy blasting, destruction, and death. I gave positive thoughts on my two James Bond entries for this Film Journal which have agent 007 murdering carelessly. Stories like Beauty and the Beast, Winnie the Pooh, Toy Story, Craig of the Creek, any Muppet production, A Christmas Carol, Blinded by the Light, and the sports manga, Haikyu!!, do not have violence as their main attraction and hardly, if any, violence at all. They are few and far between.

Often, there are not even thematically important reasons for such aggression. The point is to bask in the enjoyment of old-fashioned ultra-violence. In the action classic, Die Hard, poor Mr. Takagi gets his brains blasted out of the back of his head by Hans Gruber, just to show how enjoyably evil that classic cinema villain is. This year, I will likely get dressed, drive out, and pay money to see more films with acts of savagery marketed as must-see highlights. I will likely enjoy these films. Sure, some simulated violent entertainment is critically satirical, like in the Paul Verhoeven-directed films, RoboCop and Starship Troopers. Yet stories where violence is pleasurable to watch is entertainment to me and at least two billion others on this planet.

The mainstream television show, Criminal Minds, stars at least one serial killer episode. Heck, even the pacificist promoting children's television series, Doctor Who, is, technically speaking, one of the most violent shows with the insane number of murders, mostly arbitrary, in each episode. Too many of the action figures I grew up with can be summed up with this line from the childhood classic, Small Soldiers: "So call [the violence] action. Kid's love action." This same point applies to video games like Tales from the Borderlands, The Ghost of Tsushima, or Star Wars Battlefront II: all the gore, brutality, and shooting are all action-packed fun. Regarding the horror genre, I am an enormous fan of the Alien franchise, best known for the "chest burster" scene from the original film. I am paradoxically fascinated by the legend of The War of the Worlds; my greatest childhood horror story has fricking "war" in the title. I am looking forward to Jordan Peele's upcoming third horror film, Nope, in 2022, which, like his last two scary flicks, Get Out and Us, will undoubtedly feature R-rated violence I will accept as fine entertainment.