Saw II

The original teaser poster showing two bloody severed fingers that was banned by the Motion Picture Association of America.

Saw II was immediately green-lighted after Saw's successful opening weekend a year earlier.[5] Producers needed a script for a sequel [6] but James Wan and Leigh Whannell, director and writer of Saw, were working on Universal Pictures's Dead Silence. Music video director Darren Lynn Bousman had just completed a script for his first film The Desperate, and was trying to sell it to studios but was getting reactions that the script was very similar to Saw. A German studio eventually approached him with an offer to produce the film for $1 million. Just as they were looking for a cinematographer, the American cinematographer David A. Armstrong, who had worked on Saw, arrived on the scene and suggested showing the script to Saw producer Gregg Hoffman.[7] Hoffman read the script and called Bousman wanting to produce The Desperate.[8] Bousman was initially upset when he heard about his script's similarities to Saw, and feared at first that Lions Gate's call was due to complaints of plagiarism.[9] After Hoffman showed the script to his partners Mark Burg and Oren Koules,[8] the two decided that The Desperate was the starting script they needed for Saw II and two months later, Bousman was flown to Toronto to direct.[8]

Whannell polished the script, with input from Wan,[10] in order to bring it into the Saw universe,[6] but kept the characters, traps and deaths from The Desperate script.[11] 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".[7] Bousman's first draft for The Desperate consisted in an X-rated violent film, but after Bousman's agent found difficult to have the script bought because most studios were turned off due to the level of violence, Bousman modified his script to be an R-rated film, which is when the executives of Lions Gate were turned on his potential. Overall, the framework of The Desperate had a similar bleak, disgusting atmosphere and a twist ending, which is why the Lions Gate executives found parallels in the script's style.[9] Wan and Whannell also served as executive producers. All the previous film's crew members returned: editor Kevin Greutert, cinematographer Armstrong, and composer Charlie Clouser. This was to be Hoffman's last film. He died unexpectedly on December 4, 2005.[12]

Only those key cast and crew members who were involved in the film's ending were given the full script; the rest received only the first 88 pages. If a particular page was rewritten, the old page was shredded. Members were also required to sign confidentiality agreements requiring them not to release any plot details.[13] Reportedly, "four or five" alternate endings were shot in order to keep the ending a surprise.[10] 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 he said "made all of the difference in the world".[14] Donnie Wahlberg was allowed to modify some pieces of dialogue, especially those of Eric Matthews' interactions with his son Daniel and Jigsaw. For the former, Wahlberg added the line of what was the last thing Eric told Daniel basing it on what he says to his first son before hanging up the phone. For the latter, Wahlberg felt that the relationship between Eric and Jigsaw was "too dicey" and should emphasize Eric's need to sit with Jigsaw to rescue his son; Tobin Bell agreed with most of these changes, which Wahlberg added after finishing shooting every day, and the two improsived together on set.[15] Hoffman said in an interview with Fangoria that they listened to fans' suggestions. For instance, instead of only showing the aftermath of a character violently dying in a flashback, 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.[16]

From the first film, Tobin Bell returned to play Jigsaw even though he wasn't obligated to return.[17] Bell found it fascinating to reprise his role, but played the role like any of his, feeling that he needed to put himself on Jigsaw's side to get into character and play him properly.[18] Shawnee Smith similarly returned to play Amanda Young even though she never imagined ever reprising the role as she didn't expect the first film to be such a hit.[19] Bousman served as a stand-in for the hooded figure who places a key behind Michael Marks' eye, who the fans immediately theorized to be the first film's protagonist Dr. Lawrence Gordon, to add "flavor" to the performance, though Bousman didn't intend the figure to be Gordon.[20] Saw 3D eventually retroactively confirmed the figure to be Gordon.

Donnie Wahlberg was cast as Eric Matthews out of attraction to the character and the script.[21] At sixteen years old, Erik Knudsen was cast as Daniel Matthews in his first major feature film appearance; Knudsen auditioned hard to get the role and was excited upon being notified that he had won the part, as the first Saw was one of his favorite horror films along with the Scream series.[22]

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, but she accepted the role nonetheless because she was looking for a challenging and frightening part to push her limits, which she found in Laura physically due to the requirement to play sick and coughing.[23] Lyriq Bent originally auditioned for the role of Xavier Chavez, but was cast as Daniel Rigg instead out of fear for racial stereotypes of casting an African-American as a drug dealer, leading to Franky G's casting as Xavier, though Bent still found stereotypical of making the character Puerto-Rican.[24]

Saw II was given a larger production budget of $4 million,[25] compared to Saw's budget of a little over $1 million.[26] The marketing budget was an additional $2 million.[27] The first shot, which involved shooting police cars and a SWAT van driving around the industrial docklands outside the soundstage,[28] was filmed on April 29, 2005 in Toronto. After two months of pre-production,[11] principal photography took place over 25 days at Toronto's Cinespace Film Studios from May 2, 2005 to June 6, 2005.[28][29][30] The film was initially given 21 days to be shot. The nerve gas house scenes were shot in an abandoned warehouse in Toronto and the actors who played the Jigsaw victims there worked sixteen hours each day. At the time of filming, in addition to having an on-set tutor for two hours, Erik Knudsen caught the flu, so he filmed his part while sick, which he mused that actually worked due to his character's apparent poisoning throughout the film.[22] The ending was filmed on May 25 and 26.[31] The music and sound was recorded in July and Saw II was locked on July 16. It was completely finished by September 9.[30] Visual effects were performed by C.O.R.E. Digital Pictures and post-production services were provided by Deluxe.[10]

David Hackl, the film's production designer, took three weeks to construct 27 sets on a single sound stage.[10] The puppet Billy, used in the series to give instructions to Jigsaw's victims, was originally created by Wan out of paper towel rolls and papier-mâché. Given the larger budget for the sequel, Billy was upgraded with remote-controlled eyes and a servo-driven mouth.[32] In one trap, "The Needle Room", Smith's character Amanda is thrown into a pit of needles to find a key. In order for this to be done safely, four people, over a period of four days, removed the needle tips from syringes and replaced them with fiber optic tips. They modified a total of 120,000 fake needles. However, this number was insufficient and the pit had to be filled with styrofoam and other materials to make it appear to have more needles. The needles that were apparently stuck into Smith were actually blunted syringes stuck into padding under her clothing. For certain shots, a fake arm was used.[33]

Saw II was Bousman's first feature film.

Bousman came up with an idea whereby a character's hands would get stuck in some sort of vessel, and this resulted in the "Hand Trap". It proved to be a challenge, but after much discussion, Hackl, property master Jim Murray and art director Michele Brady came up with a suitable design. They arranged a glass box suspended by chains from the ceiling which contained a hypodermic needle with the antidote and which had two hand-holes on the underside. As soon as Emmanuelle Vaugier's character Addison Corday puts her hands into the holes, razor blades would close in on her hands, and any attempt to withdraw from the trap would cause her to bleed to death. In order for the trap to be used safely, the prop builders made the handcuffs move inside the box and fake blades that would retract from the actress's hands, thus allowing her to slide her hands out. Hackl subsequently commented that the character did not have to put her hands into the trap, as there was a lock with a key on the other side of the box that would have opened the contraption.[34][35]

The original idea for the "Furnace Trap" came from the house having been a crematorium at some point, but this would have involved turning the house into a funeral parlor, so it was instead decided that the furnace would be part of the house's boiler system. The furnace was visualized in the form of a computer model so that Bousman could better understand how shots could be filmed. Using the computer model as a guide, the furnace was constructed in three days using cement board and tin with removable sides and top so Timothy Burd's character Obi Tate could be filmed crawling inside. The furnace produced real flames and, in place of Burd, a stuntman using a fire retardant gel crawled into the fire.[36]

Saw II was released on DVD, VHS, and Universal Media Disc on February 14, 2006 through Lions Gate Home Entertainment. The DVD debuted as number one selling 2.5 million units in its first day. It went on to sell 3.9 million units its first week, becoming the fastest selling theatrical DVD in Lions Gate's history.[46]

On October 24, 2006, an Unrated Special Edition was released, while an Unrated Blu-ray edition was also released with various special features on January 23, 2007.[47][48]

Saw II opened with $31.7 million on 3,879 screens across 2,949 theaters.[49] The three-day Halloween opening weekend set a Lions Gate record. It became at the time, the widest release for Lions Gate and one of the best opening weekends for a horror sequel.[50] For its second weekend it fell 47% making $16.9 million.[51] The film was closed out of theaters on January 5, 2006 after 70 days of release.

Saw II opened in the United Kingdom with $3.8 million on 305 screens, 70% larger than the first instalment. It opened in Japan on 67 screens with $750,000.[52] Opening to $1.3 million on 173 screens it was the number one film in Australia.[53] The film grossed $87 million in the United States and Canada and $60.7 million in other markets for a worldwide total of $147.7 million.[4] The film is the 2nd highest-grossing film of the Saw series, only behind Saw III and Lions Gate's fourth highest-grossing film in the United States and Canada.[54][55] According to CinemaScore polls, 53% of the audience were males under 25 years of age. The poll also indicated that 65% of the audience were familiar with the first film.[56]

Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 37% of 122 critics have given the film a positive review; the average rating is 4.59/10. The site's consensus was, "Saw II is likely to please the gore-happy fans of the original, though it may be too gruesome for those not familiar with first film's premise."[57] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, gives the film a score of 40 based on 28 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[58] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[59]

Robert Koehler of Variety wrote, "cooking up new Rube Goldberg torture contraptions isn't enough to get Saw II out of the shadow of its unnerving predecessor".[60] Gregory Kirschling of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a B minus, saying "Saw II is just barely a better B flick than Saw" and that both films are "more clever and revolting than they are actually chilling". He praised Bell's performance as Jigsaw, saying "As the droopy-lidded maniac in the flesh, Tobin Bell is, for all the film's gewgaws, Saw II's sturdiest horror, a Terence Stamp look-alike who calls to mind a seedy General Zod lazily overseeing the universe from his evildoer's lair". He ended his review: "Where Saw II lags behind in Saw's novelty, it takes the lead with its smoother landing, which is again primed to blow the movie wide open, but manages a more compelling job of it than the original's cheat finish".[61]

Kevin Crust of the Los Angeles Times called Saw II a "worthy follow-up to its grisly predecessor". He said the story was "much more focused on an endgame than the original film. There are fewer credibility gaps and there are plenty of reversals to satisfy fans". He criticized the use of numerous flashbacks, saying that it "rob[s] us of the pleasure of actually remembering for ourselves".[62] Laura Kern, writing for The New York Times, said that Bousman "delivers similar hard-core, practically humorless frights and hair-raising tension, but only after getting past a shaky beginning that plays more like a forensics-themed television show than a scary movie" and called Greutert's editing "crafty". She called the sequel "more trick than treat" and that it "doesn't really compare to its fine predecessor - though it still manages to be eye-opening (and sometimes positively nauseating) in itself".[63] Empire's Kim Newman gave the film three out of five stars. He said that the film improves upon Saw's "perverse fascination with Seven-style murders and brutally violent puzzles" and that Jigsaw's intellectual games make "Hannibal Lecter look like the compiler of The Sun's quick crossword". He ended his reviews saying, "Morally dubious it may be, but this gory melange of torture, terror and darkly humorous depravity appeals to the sick puppy within us all".[64]

Tobin Bell was nominated for "Best Villain" at the 2006 MTV Movie Awards for his role as Jigsaw,[65] though the award went to Hayden Christensen for his role as Darth Vader in Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.[66]