Saw II has arrived just in time for Halloween, an amazing feat given that the first film opened less than a year ago. Not so amazing is the technical quality of the movie. It's clear that the movie was fast tracked. Still, Saw II is on par with it's predecessor. On some levels, it's better (while hardly a tour de force of virtuoso acting, not one performance bothered me nearly as much as Carey Elwes did in the first picture) while on others, it's not up to snuff (the tortuous carnage here isn't as imaginative as it was in the first - save for a cringe inducing sequence featuring a pit full of syringes).

To be completely honest, I wasn't overwhelmed by the first movie. Sure, I thought it had fantastic moments (how can you not like that twist), but overall, I felt the overacting and underdeveloped characters kept that film from being everything it could be. Saw II doesn't exactly go out of it's way to rectify the problems with the first movie, but it's still more clever than your average horror film.

In Saw II, psychotic mastermind Jigsaw (a terrific Tobin Bell) returns for another go around, this time with hot headed cop Eric Matthews (played by Donnie Wahlberg), and a group of six strangers who awake to find themselves trapped in a dark and dingy house with a maze-like structure. Quickly, Matthews learns that even though he isn't isolated with these particular strangers, that his situation is just as dire, perhaps even more so.

Like the original film, Saw II (as was the case with the first picture) sort of plays like a sick and twisted game of Survivor. The contestants on display in this sequel are thrown into some truly diabolical scenarios (one in particular really made my skin crawl), but with the exception of the aforementioned, none of these survival tests were as gripping as the torturous, cruel tests created for the first picture. And in fact, one test is actually duplicated for this follow-up. It features a sort of venus fly trap contraption hooked to a man's head. If he is unable to find a key to unlock the piece of machinery before the timer runs out...well...you get the idea. A similar scenario is played to stronger effect in the original film, but I must say, it is a stroke of genius where Jigsaw hides the key this time around.

The genesis of the screenplay is fairly interesting. The initial story wasn't written as a Saw film but Lions Gate purchased the rights and brought Saw screenwriter Leigh Whannell on board to twist and shape the story structure around the Saw mythology. The final product is familiar and includes little winks to other works of horror including a perfectly placed nod to Wes Craven's Last House on the Left.

The performances here are extremely weak with the exception of Tobin Bell, a terrific character actor who takes the Jigsaw character to new heights. Bell is given a more meaty role this time, and we're even given a little back story on why he does what he does. Wahlberg is sub par as detective Matthews. A shame given his exceptional work on the short lived TV series Boomtown. I suppose I like his bursts of anger, but his few scenes of breakdown are hardly effective. One moment in particular features a distraught Matthews getting teary eyed. For whatever reason, I immediately pictured the film makers turning off the camera and throwing some cayenne pepper in his face so he could tear up (a similar technique I'm convinced they used on brother Mark in Four Brothers). He just didn't sell it at all. The cast of strangers who struggle to survive in the house are hardly worth mentioning as they aren't really characters at all. Of the new potential victims, Shawnee Smith is the only returning cast member from the first film, and she's absolutely horrified at the thought of going through another one of Jigsaw's gruesome games. Thankfully, as awful as a few of the performances are here, none of them reach the overacting depths of the inept Carey Elwes in the first picture. Granted, this movie moves at such a quick clip, that there isn't time to dwell upon any of them long enough to allow this to happen. Thank God for that.

In terms of style, Saw II is amateurish and chalk full of that awful music video style editing that I bitch about so much on this site, but strangely, I didn't hate the movie. It isn't any better or any worse than the first picture. Many of the things that bothered me about the last outing (Carey Elwes, the unnecessary Danny Glover character etc.) are nowhere to be found. On the other hand the novelty and cleverly perverse tone brought on by the torture devices in Saw don't work as well here. They just aren't as imaginative. Still, the movie moves at a nice enough pace, and I can't say that I was ever entirely bored by it.

Oh, and did I happen to mention that there's a twist? While it isn't the doozy that Saw had to offer, it is sensible enough given Jigsaw's terminal condition. Without giving too much away, lets just say that the outcome here makes much more sense if you've seen the first movie.

Saw II is hardly a re-invention of the genre. It owes the world to the likes of Seven and Usual Suspects but hell, what movie doesn't borrow from another movie, especially in the horror genre. This flick was clearly fast tracked so that it would make it's Halloween weekend opening and the rushed production values certainly show through. Still, if you liked the first picture, this one should be right up your alley. It's more of the same.