Saw II
Saw II is a 2005 American horror film directed by Darren Lynn Bousman and written by Leigh Whannell and Bousman. It is the sequel to Saw and the second installment in the Saw film series. The film stars Donnie Wahlberg, Franky G, Glenn Plummer, Beverley Mitchell, Dina Meyer, Emmanuelle Vaugier, Erik Knudsen, Shawnee Smith, and Tobin Bell. In the film, a group of ex-convicts are trapped by the Jigsaw Killer inside a house and must pass a series of deadly tests to retrieve the antidote for a nerve agent that will kill them in two hours.
Following the successful opening weekend of Saw, a sequel was quickly green-lit. Bousman was hired after previously having written a script that had a similar premise. Producer Gregg Hoffman received the script and shared it with his partners Mark Burg and Oren Koules, who determined that, with revisions, it could be the basis for Saw II. Whannell later provided rewrites for the script. The film received a larger production budget and was filmed in Toronto from May to June 2005.
Saw II was released in the United States by Lionsgate Films on October 28, 2005. It opened with $31.9 million and grossed $88 million in the United States and Canada. It has remained the highest grossing Saw film in those countries. Saw II was released to home media on February 14, 2006, and topped charts its first week. Bell was nominated for Best Villain at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards for his role. Saw II was followed by a sequel, Saw III, in 2006, and a prequel, Saw X, in 2023.
Plot
Police informant Michael Marks awakens in a room with a spike-filled mask locked around his neck. Billy the Puppet on a screen tells him that the key to open the death mask has been surgically inserted behind his eye. He cannot bring himself to cut his eye, and is killed when the mask closes on his head.At the scene of Michael's murder, Detective Allison Kerry finds a message for her former partner, Detective Eric Matthews. Eric joins Kerry and Officer Daniel Rigg in leading a SWAT team to the factory which produced the lock from Michael's trap. There, they apprehend John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, who indicates computer monitors showing eight people trapped in a house, including his only known survivor Amanda Young, Eric's son Daniel, and six other victims: Xavier, Jonas, Laura, Addison, Obi, and Gus. A nerve agent filling the house will kill them all within two hours, but John assures Eric that if he follows the rules of his own game, he will find Daniel again in a safe place. At Kerry's urging, Eric agrees to buy time for the tech team to arrive and trace the video signal. During their conversation, John reveals to Eric that his main motivation for his games was a suicide attempt after his cancer diagnosis, which led to a newfound appreciation for life; the games are intended to help his victims develop the same appreciation.
The group is informed by a microcassette recorder that antidotes are hidden throughout the house; one is in the room's safe, and the tape provides a cryptic clue. Xavier ignores a warning note and uses the key provided with the cassette on the door, which triggers a revolver through the peephole that kills Gus. Once the door opens, they search the house and find a basement, where Obi, who helped with abducting the other victims, is killed in a furnace trap while trying to retrieve two antidotes. In another room, Xavier's test involves digging through a pit filled with syringes to retrieve a key to a steel door in two minutes, but he instead throws Amanda into the pit. She retrieves the key, but Xavier fails to unlock the door in time. Throughout the game, the group discuss connections between them and determine that each has been incarcerated before except Daniel. During his father's test, John reveals their affiliation to Eric, who was a corrupt police officer who framed his suspects in various crimes.
Xavier returns to the safe room and finds a number on the back of Gus's neck. After realizing the numbers are the combination for the safe, he kills Jonas and begins hunting the others. Laura succumbs to the nerve agent and dies, after finding the clue revealing Daniel's identity. Incensed by the revelation, Addison leaves on her own and finds a glass box containing an antidote, but her arms become trapped in the openings which are lined with hidden blades. Xavier enters the room and leaves her to die after reading her number. Amanda and Daniel find a tunnel from the first room leading to a dilapidated bathroom, where they find Adam and Zep's bodies. After Xavier corners them, Amanda taunts him by implying that he will not learn his number because nobody will read it to him. Xavier responds by cutting off a piece of skin from the back of his neck to read his own number. Xavier charges them, and Daniel slits his throat with a hacksaw.
Having seen Xavier chasing his son, Eric assaults John and forces him to lead him to the house. The tech team tracks the video's source and while Rigg's team searches the house, Kerry realizes that the game took place days before they captured John and the footage they thought they'd been seeing live was actually pre-recorded. Soon after, the timer for Eric's game expires and a safe in the factory unlocks to reveal Daniel inside, bound and breathing in an oxygen mask. Unaware of these events, Eric enters the house alone and makes his way to the bathroom, where he is subdued by a pig-masked figure. He awakens shackled at the ankle to a pipe and finds a tape recorder left by Amanda, who reveals she had become John's accomplice after surviving her first trap and helped him set up Eric's test during the game at the house, intending to continue John's work after he dies. Amanda then appears and seals the door, leaving Eric to die as John hears his screams outside and smiles.
Cast
Production
Development and writing
After the success of Saws opening weekend, a sequel was quickly greenlit. Since director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell were occupied with Universal Pictures' Dead Silence, producers were searching for another writer and director. Around this time, music video director Darren Lynn Bousman had written The Desperate, which studios rejected for being too similar to Saw. A German studio offered to produce it for $1 million, but before that moved forward, Saw cinematographer David A. Armstrong suggested Bousman's script to producer Gregg Hoffman. Impressed, Hoffman contacted Bousman with interest in producing it. Initially concerned about accusations of plagiarism, Bousman learned instead that Hoffman and his partners, Mark Burg and Oren Koules, believed The Desperate could serve as the foundation for Saw II. Within two months, Bousman was brought to Toronto to direct the sequel. Saw II was also the final film produced by Hoffman, who died on December 4, 2005, shortly after its release.Whannell revised Bousman's script, with input from Wan, to integrate it into the Saw universe while retaining the characters, traps, and deaths from The Desperate. Bousman said, "But you could read the script for The Desperate and watch Saw II, and you would not be able to draw a comparison". His original draft for The Desperate consisted of an X-rated violent film, but after difficulty in attracting studio interest due to its graphic violence, he revised it into an R-rated, which drew the attention of Lionsgate executives. Overall, the framework of The Desperate had a similar bleak, grotesque atmosphere and a twist ending, which is why the executives found parallels in the script's style. Wan and Whannell served as executive producers, and several crew members from the first film returned, including Armstrong, editor Kevin Greutert, and composer Charlie Clouser.
To preserve secrecy, only key cast and crew members involved in the film's ending were given the complete script; others received only the first 88 pages. Rewritten pages were shredded, and all members were required to sign confidentiality agreements prohibiting the release of plot details. Reportedly, "four or five" alternate endings were shot in order to keep the ending a surprise. Producer Hoffman stated in Fangoria that the filmmakers considered fans' feedback. For example, instead of only showing flashbacks of a character violently dying, they would allow it to unfold as it happened. This was in contrast to Saw, in which most of the violence was implied off-screen.
Casting
reprised his role as Jigsaw from the first film, despite not being contractually obligated to return. Bell found it fascinating to return, but played the role like any of his, feeling the need to understand the character's perspective in order to portray him effectively. Shawnee Smith similarly returned to play Amanda Young, later noting that she had not anticipated reprising the role, as she did not expect the first film to be successful. Smith received $150,000 for her performance, with an additional $100,000 bonus contingent on the film grossing over $50 million. Bousman served as a stand-in for the hooded figure who places a key behind the character Michael Marks' eye, a role that some viewers speculated was Dr. Lawrence Gordon from the first film, though Bousman later stated that this was not his intention.Donnie Wahlberg was cast as Eric Matthews after expressing interest in both the character and the script. At sixteen years old, Erik Knudsen was cast as Eric's son, Daniel Matthews, in his first major feature film role. A fan of the first Saw film and the Scream franchise, Knudsen said he actively pursued the part. He would later star in Scream 4.
Beverley Mitchell was cast as Laura Hunter despite her dislike for horror films and her inability to watch the first film full until trying for the fifth time. She accepted the role as a personal challenge, noting the physical demands of portraying a character who is being poisoned and frequently coughs. Lyriq Bent initially auditioned for the role of Xavier Chavez but was cast instead as Daniel Rigg. According to Bent, the change was made to avoid the stereotype of casting an African-American actor as a drug dealer. The role of Xavier was ultimately given to Franky G, though Bent later remarked that casting a Puerto Rican actor in the part was also stereotypical.
Bousman gave the actors freedom to change dialogue in the script. He said that 95% of the time, the actors went by the script, with about 5% being adlibs, which "made all of the difference in the world". Wahlberg was allowed to modify some pieces of dialogue, particularly in scenes between Eric Matthews and his son Daniel, as well as those with Jigsaw. For the former, he incorporated a line based on something he had personally said to his own son. For the latter, Wahlberg sought to emphasize Eric's desperation to sit with Jigsaw in order to save Daniel, which Bell supported. The two actors improvised several of their interactions on set, with Wahlberg often adding changes after the day's filming had concluded.