Saw II Film Analysis

Saw II is a Canadian-American horror movie that was released in October 2005. The director for this movie was Darren Lynn Bousman, who also contributed to some of the screenplay along with Leigh Whannell. Gregg Hoffman, Mark Burg and Oren Koules all contributed to the production of this horror movie and it was then distributed by Lionsgate. Saw II doesn’t contain any well-known stars and instead uses smaller actors, some of these being; Donnie Wahlberg who plays the corrupted police officer; Erik Knudsen as the Eric the police officers son; Tobin Bell as John otherwise known as Jigsaw and Amanda Young who plays Shawnee – a player of the game.

I think that this movie follows some of the rules from Todorov’s narrative theory however it is a more unusual approach to the structured theory. The beginning of the movie doesn’t have much relevance to the rest of the storyline and so therefore I wouldn’t say that this is the movies starting equilibrium, instead the equilibrium for the movie is the next scene where two people can be seen arguing to which one of them leaves and the other (who is a Detective) is soon called away to a scene of a death. Up until this point, it would seem that this is something that regularly happens and therefore the storyline is showing a normal life. However, the crime scene that the Detective is called away to is what is significant to the rest of the storyline because the symbol of a padlock can be seen on the device around the victim’s neck and this becomes the signifier for other deaths and also for the murderer. The next stage in the theory is an event and this event is the kidnapping of 8 people who have been put in a house full of saw traps and this is then recognised when the SWAT team of detectives follow the clues from the last death and find what they think is live CCTV footage from a house where all the victims are being kept – one of these victims being the main Detectives son, and this acts as the next stage to Todorov’s theory where the event is recognised. The next stage to the theory isn’t ever fully completed, because most of the people who are kidnapped don’t make it out of the house and the house is never found instead it turns out one of the people who were kidnapped was in with Jigsaw and the son of the Detective is found in a safe. To finish the movie there isn’t much showing of a new equilibrium instead it shows the Detective in his own saw trap and the audience don’t know whether he makes it out or not. I think that the narrative for the movie follows some of the stages of Todorov’s theory however they aren’t always in the right order and some of the stages are missed out completely or never finished.

When an audience go to watch any genre of movie, they almost always know what to expect unless it is a completely new genre. This is mainly because every genre of movie has its own elements that make it recognisable to an audience which makes marketing the movie a lot easier – for example being able to attract the right audience. Due to this movie being part of the horror genre it is clear that there will be certain expectations such as for it to be horrific and terrify the audience and how it does this varies. For this movie in particular, it would be expected that it will contain elements of gore and gore that is advanced due to the aspects that the previous movie held. As this movie is a sequel to the first Saw, I think that audience would expect it to have a lot more gore than the previous movie and more advanced trap ideas. As well as this they may also expect to find certain character from the previous movie also.

There are a lot of scenes in the movie that hold a lot of gore and this is the main aspect of this movie that allows the audience to know that it is a horror. The Saw movies are made of many different traps and this is the main element of horror in the movies, for Saw II specifically, there were around 9 different traps. One of the more horrific traps for this movie was ‘The Needle Pit’ and this consisted of the middle of a room being filled with used syringes, and one of the victims had to jump into the pit and find the key to unlock the door and gain another antidote, the idea of the trap was that it would be like “finding a needle in a haystack.” Another one of the traps that was used in this movie was ‘The Nerve Gas House’ which was the large trap that has other traps inside of it, for this trap all the victims awoke in a house where they were breathing in a deadly gas to which they had to find the antidotes in each of the smaller traps in order to survive. This trap required all the victims to work together and this is something that doesn’t happen and if the audience have watched the precious Saw movie, will know won’t happen and therefore a lot of deaths take place. All the elements that make this movie a horror, is what allows it to be placed in the gore category for the history of horror movies and as more movies are made, we expect more gore to come out of them.

As an audience, it is unclear of who is a victim and who is a villain (Propp’s Character Functions) in the movie to begin with, this is because we think these people have been placed in the trapped house are victims of Jigsaw’s plans when in fact they have all been put there with reasoning which could lead the audience to believe that they are villains in some ways. One of the characters who has been best displayed is Amanda because throughout the movie, the audience believe that she becomes a victim of the other kidnappers attacks (she was also in the previous Saw movie) and it isn’t until the end of the movie that the audience find out she had been one of the villains all along and has been helping in Jigsaw’s plans – she also ends of locking Detective Matthews in ‘The Bathroom Trap’ where he is left to die. The main villain for this movie and the audience know this because he is the one who knows where the Nerve Gas House and he is the one who planned the kidnapping of the people who have been put in the house. However, even when the movie has ended, the audience are still unclear on whether Detective Matthews is a victim or not, this is because he doesn’t come across as having any victim like qualities and in one scene, he beats up Jigsaw and so he wouldn’t come across as a character who is a victim in the movie, but at the end he is placed in a trap and so in this sense he is a victim but the reasons for him being put in the trap could lead to him being seen as more of a villain – although throughout the movie, many audiences will be on the side of what seems the corrupt Detective.

According to Strauss’ theory of binary opposition, a movie should show an opposition and for this movie it could be the idea of Good vs. Evil, however the whole movie does conform to this idea and it challenges it in a lot of ways. For example, it is uncertain whether some characters are victims or not and so it can’t be seen whether they are trying to defeat ‘evil.’ This means that the audience can’t be sure what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’ and so it’s not until the end of the movie whether it can be determined that good had triumphed evil or vice versa.

In conclusion, Saw II is a movie that doesn’t follow too many conventions of movies in terms of its characters and its narrative, however it does follow the conventions that make it a horror movie and this could be seen as the most important aspect because without these aspects, the movie wouldn’t be a horror. It’s the typical aspects such as the tension and the questioning of what will happen next and who will survive throughout the movie, along with the settings for the movie such as the abandoned and secluded house as well the fact that the movie doesn’t use a lot of lighting and so this is creates a creepier environment. With all the elements that Saw does hold, I think this is what has helped it become a successful film globally and this is why there is a demand for more movies similar to it.