Saw II: Oh Yes...There Will Be Blood

If you saw the first “Saw,” you’ll want to see “Saw II,” too.

Just don’t expect the nastiness of the first film. In this one, most of the terror is psychological as the victims try to piece together their pasts as they try to escape the deadly puzzle in which they find themselves. 

Eric (Donnie Wahlberg), a former police detective who’s now doing desk work, discovers that his name is written at a homicide scene. He reluctantly joins the investigate another detective (Dina Meyer) recognizes that this is the work of serial-killer Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), who obviously wants to communicate with Eric. The detectives find the ailing Jigsaw in a strange-looking laboratory/tech center.

Jigsaw, who has cancer - or so he says - tells Eric that he wants to talk with him privately. In the meantime, a new puzzle seems to be unfolding on the video monitors in the lab. Nine people are trapped in some sort of room where danger seems to lurk in every corner.

Daniel (Erik Knudsen), Eric’s son, is among the victims who have been kidnapped and taken to this frightening place where they awoke. Now it’s all Eric can do to refrain from screaming, destroying Jigaw’s files, or roughing up the suspect to find Eric’s son.

From there, the movie turns into a kind of stalk ‘n’ slash that blends with “microcosm” films such as zombie flicks and “Lord of the Flies”-type shows in which characters bicker amongst themselves.

These characters do more than bicker. They’ll kill each other to escape their prison. The muscled, testosterone-driven Xavier (Franky G) doesn’t want to stop and think about how to get out - he wants to take action, any action, and now. One of the victims, Amanda (Shawnee Smith) has been through this before - she survived a ghastly trap in the original show.

One by one, the characters meet ghastly deaths as they try to figure out how to open doors, find the hidden tapes messages from Jigsaw and determine the best way to find their way out of a house that seems to be full of locked doors and twisted, lethal traps.