Well I guess it just depends on how you were watching it. I went with several people. The ones who had seen the first one, came to the sequel expecting to see the first one again. They hated Saw 2. One other person and I went knowing what we were going to see - a more insightful, character-driven movie. We knew it would tell us more about Jigsaw, and that's what we wanted to know. What I found was some intelligent dialogue, even though pretty much all of it came from Jigsaw himself. But fuck the 8 people in the house, I just came to watch 'em die. True, the death scenes were more of a 90's fashion than those in the first one, but a few of 'em stayed with me. Like the pit - for 2 days after I saw Saw 2, the thought would randomly pop into my head "how would that feel?" So IMO, they were more effective than they seem upon first watching the movie.

Personally, I liked Saw 2 quite a bit, for the fact that it was humanistic. I thought the ending was a good twist too, playing off of basic human nature.

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