Saw II
This is the story of eight strangers picked to live in a house, have their lives taped, and find out what happens when people stop being polite and start being real.
No, this is not another season of ''The Real World," it's the second installment of ''Saw." Indeed, a year after the debut of the first movie, ''Saw II" reunites us with Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), the cancer patient with the passive-aggressive approach to serial killing (his victims kill one another.) Here he's locked some folks in a big, dank, booby-trapped shelter, where he's left them clues and riddles they must follow and solve in order to survive his medieval tortures. Needless to say, ''Saw II" is not for the faint of heart. It's for the foolish of wallet.
The victims have something in common, although it takes forever for them to figure out what. They're given two hours. After that, the poison gas that's streaming out the air vents will have corroded their insides. So following instructions is crucial. The first victim disobeys that order about not unlocking a door and promptly has the back of his head blown out.
At one point, the film takes a break from the bloodletting inside the house to give us a police procedural. In the name of reality TV, Jigsaw and the cops watch the action on surveillance monitors. Donnie Wahlberg plays the detective on the case and the estranged father of one of the contestants. He looks tired and mad as hell: Where is his son? But those old-school, rogue-cop methods of his won't get him far with Jigsaw. As one SWAT commando remarks, the detective has ''to start thinking outside the box or his son's gonna be in one." Word.
This all makes for dreadful moviegoing, even on Halloween. It's not that the acting is bad -- except for Dina Meyer, as the other detective, and Frankie G, as one of the most annoying horror victims in the genre's history. It's that there's little fun in watching a girl fish for a key in a pit of hypodermic needles -- even if she used to be a junkie.
The first ''Saw" offered mounting existential dread: two strangers woke up in a foul washroom and had to hack each other up. It was Jean-Paul Sartre's ''No Exit" by way of the grindhouse. It wasn't good, but it occasionally delivered the visceral terror we want from a horror movie. The sequel sheds both philosophy and suspense.
Darren Lynn Bousman and Leigh Whannell wrote ''Saw II," which Bousman directed. They aren't yet 30, and Whannell, who also wrote and acted in the first movie, looks particularly fresh-faced in his publicity photos. Accordingly, his movie is the product of immaturity. It approaches suffering with a meaninglessness that must be a luxury for anyone who has never lost anyone, or is incapable of empathizing with someone who has.
Wesley Morris can be reached at wmorris@globe.com.
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