Editorials
Happy 10th Anniversary to ‘Saw II!’
The Saw franchise has lately become the punching bag of the horror community. It isn’t bashed as much as Eli Roth, but it’s still up there. Credited with giving birth to the torture porn sub-genre (Hostel would come out less than a year later), Saw and the franchise it spawned is mostly viewed with contempt and scorn nowadays (seriously, just read some of the comments on this post). I would like to take you back to a time, ten years ago, when Saw was the most talked about horror movie that everyone had seen, before it was infected with sequelitis and before audiences knew to expect a new film every Halloween. It was was the soon-to-be-released sequel, Saw II.
***SPOILERS for a 10-year-old film to follow***
Saw II would end up becoming the highest grossing film in the Saw series, earning $87 million on a $4 million budget. It showed the franchise at the peak of its popularity. You couldn’t talk to a horror fan without talking about how much you were looking forward to the film. Hell, even non-horror fans were talking about Saw II. While it would all go downhill from there box office-wise (and some would say quality-wise as well), Saw II still represents an enormous triumph for Lionsgate Films and the horror community.
Something I didn’t know about Saw II (thanks Wikipedia) is that its original script was for a completely original film that Darren Lynn Bousman wrote called The Desperate. The producers read the script and, since James Wan or Leigh Whannell were busy filming Dead Silence, decided that they could tweak Bousman’s script and turn it into Saw II (Whannell was eventually made available to do script rewrites, with Wan supervising). Saw II was Bousman’s first major directing gig, and he knocks it out of the park. On a completely unrelated note: Bousman made the film when he was 26, the same age I am now. I feel quite unaccomplished knowing that fact, but that’s a discussion for me and my therapist.
The acting in the film isn’t spectacular, but everyone does what is required of them. The casting is a bit bizarre (remember when Lucy from 7th Heaven was in Saw II? Yeah, that was a thing), but Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith and even Donnie Wahlberg turn in great performances. Let’s take a moment to talk about Shawnee Smith though. She is just great. Relegated to an extended cameo in Saw, she completely owns Saw II and steals the film from Tobin Bell. Bousman’s script is kind to her, allowing her to play weak and vulnerable in the first act, only to do a complete 180 in the climax and show off Amanda’s devious nature.
Saw II does what every sequel should: it takes what made the original so effective (intricate traps, complex villain, a twist ending) and makes them bigger and better. It even removes Cary Elwes from the equation, which helps immensely. The sequel retains (for the most part) the one-location setting style of the first film, but rather than have the entire film be set in one room, it is set in a large house, making room for plenty of deadly traps.
Speaking of the traps, they are the real stars of the film. While Saw II does feature the single worst trap in the entire franchise, all of the other ones are stellar. The infamous needle pit is known for being a high point in the franchise, but the venus flytrap in the opening sequence is nothing to scoff at.
One thing that sets Saw II apart from Saw is that it shows all of the violence up close and in graphic detail. While it may be hard to believe, Saw is possibly the least gory film in the franchise. This of course means that we have Saw II to thank for the increase in gratuitous violence in the series (and other horror films of the decade), so that factoid may impress or disappoint you. That being said, Saw II really isn’t that gory, especially when compared to the five sequels that followed it.
While Saw II is tied with Saw VI (a supremely underrated sequel) for having the second-best Rotten Tomatoes score out of all the Saw films (the best would be the original), I would argue that Saw II is the best film in the franchise. I know, I know, that’s blasphemous, but hear me out.
Saw II benefits greatly from the lack of Cary Elwes and his overacting, as we mentioned in our review ten years ago. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of The Princess Bride and I think he’s great in it, but he is absolutely awful in Saw and the main reason why the sequel is the better film.
The twist ending is also particularly clever. The film faced a dilemma in having to top the twist from the first film. While Amanda being Jigsaw’s partner doesn’t pack the same punch as Jigsaw being in the room the whole time, it’s still made more effective by the additional (and admittedly The Silence of the Lambs-y) twist that the police are sent to the wrong house to rescue the trapped characters. This blatant imitation is made slightly less offensive by another twist: that all of the footage taken of the people has already happened. The police were watching a recording and Donnie Wahlberg’s son was locked in a safe in the same room he was in the entire time.
Saw II is a great film and a fantastic sequel that’s reputation has unfortunately been marred by the numerous copycats (and sequels) it spawned. The film has its flaws (Beverley Mitchell’s death by nerve gas is still incredibly underwhelming, as is the fact that we never find out why half of the people were put in the house), but taken on its own it’s a solid horror effort. If the film has one glaring weakness, it’s the aforementioned bullshit glass box trap. It’s terrible, just terrible.
Editorials
Not Another ‘Scary Movie’: Revisiting Forgotten Parody ‘Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th’
After Scream (1996) made a killing at the box office, as well as won over critics and audiences, a lot of folks in the movie biz thought they could do the same thing (and yield similar results). That thing, of course, being a slasher. Most of these opportunists wound up being pretty straightforward; they were low on humor or commentary. Yet others, like Scary Movie (2000), saw the potential for spoofing Scream, and acted on that impulse with both haste and excitement.
A few months after the Wayans’ comedy first hit theaters, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th landed on the USA Network, as part of the channel’s “Shriek Week” programming. That straight-to-cable (then home video) destination is possibly why many people still don’t know about this one. Or they simply chose to forget. Whatever the reason, only one of these two horror parodies came out on top—and it’s certainly not the movie where Coolio channeled Prince, and Tom Arnold saved the day.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th previously went by the name of I Know What You Screamed Last Semester. That Trimark acquisition then settled on a wordier title, just so it could avoid the litigious wrath of Miramax Films. Folks may or may not remember that Columbia Pictures was sued over the “implied connection” between I Know What You Did Last Summer (1997) and Scream. So, yeah, there was no way that this competing Scream parody wasn’t going to be kept on a tight rein.
A Heavy Reliance on Late ’90s TV References
Simon Rex, Julie Benz, Majandra Delfino, Harley Cross, Danny Strong, Tom Arnold and Tiffani-Amber Thiesen in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Naturally, there would be similarities between Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th and Scary Movie—their scripts are built on the backs of the same two movies. It goes without saying that the other big slasher of the 1990s, I Know What You Did Last Summer, was as much of a target as Scream. However,the film pads itself with more TV references than Scary Movie did.
Half the cast coming off of (and in some cases, returning to) a WB show could be a reason why. Dawson’s Creek is particularly zeroed in on, based on how there’s a central character named “Dawson Deery“, and how the teen drama’s teacher-student affair plotline is satirized to the nth degree. As if there weren’t enough nods to television, Baywatch, VH1’s Pop Up Video, and even those cheesy Mentos commercials all serve as joke prompts.
Shriek director John Blanchard and writers Sue Bailey and Joe Nelms all hailed from television, so it’s understandable that they would stick close to home. The movie’s humor in general makes more sense, in light of learning that Blanchard worked on SCTV, Kids in the Hall, and MADtv. The writers, on the other hand, were each fairly green, with Bailey being the most experienced of the two; she wrote and produced the game show BattleBots. Nevertheless, they, plus Blanchard, churned out a passable, joke-a-minute movie. The whole thing is staggeringly of its time, but no one here was aiming for longevity.
Having seen enough of these kinds of movies, we know to expect jokes of the low-hanging fruit variety. That’s the parody’s whole prime directive. From the characters having names like “Screw Frombehind” and “Doughy Primesuspect”, to stereotyping that feels taboo nowadays, this is a movie from a different era of comedy. Its coarse, corny, and unapologetic sense of humor won’t sit well with everyone in these more enlightened times. In which case, Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th can be treated as a time capsule.
Does Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th Humor Still Hold Up Today?
“You may already be a victim”—Someone receives a most peculiar threatening piece of mail in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th.
Although Shriek doesn’t live up to its own claims of being so funny that you’ll die of laughter, its bawdier parts could still lead to some nervous laughter. For instance, after this movie’s parallel to Drew Barrymore’s Scream character is done in—not by the killer but by a bug zapper—the movie throws a newspaper next to the victim’s fresh corpse. The headline? “Popular slut killed! Football team mourns”.
We then move on to the wacky and inappropriate goings-on at Bulimia Falls High School, home of the Hurlers. At this nexus of constant absurdity, indecency, and surrealism, students are seen fornicating on the lawn, cheerleading squad applicants are advised to be comfortable with partial nudity, and terrorists openly prepare for an anthrax attack. It can be a tad jarring to watch, especially if you didn’t grow up witnessing this style of comedy firsthand. Hell, even if you did, you may still have a “what the hell were they thinking?” reaction.
It’s not just the aggressively edgy humor here that can make you chuckle—the slapstick, the sight gags, and the ribaldry all have a decent chance of landing. The movie’s own villain, whose hockey mask was instantly transformed into a crudely Ghostface-esque one after coming in contact with an open flame, commits more cheap laughs than kills. His and his victims’ chase sequences, most of which are cartoonish in nature, left this writer grinning. The Scooby-Doo fan in me also totally ate up that clever unmasking joke.
Final Thoughts on This Forgotten Horror Parody
Shriek If You Know What Did Last Friday the 13th
Now, the jury is still out on whether these comedies are to blame for the death of the first slasher revival. There is more to consider than some parodies. At the very least, the likes of Scary Movie didn’t exactly encourage big studios to put their money on a trend that was being derided to death (and not as profitable as the spoofs). These sorts of movies also felt unnecessary at the time, given how their principal inspiration is already a deconstruction of the genre. But like anything else that quickly becomes popular, mockery is unavoidable.
Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th is indeed a movie nobody asked for, much less needed. As a sample of pre-millennium humor and cultural attitudes, it’s not always precise. But as I’ve laid out, your mileage may vary. Horror parodies typically don’t have the best track record, so managing one’s own expectations here is recommended.
Upon rewatching, I for one laughed a bit more than I did back then. Only this time, I responded to the jokes that my younger self didn’t notice or find all that amusing. So it just goes to show that the movies don’t change—we do.
Harley Cross and Majandra Delfino must unmask the killer a number of times in Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the 13th before learning their true identity.
You must be logged in to post a comment.