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.

Matthews joins Kerry and Officer 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, Matthews'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 Matthews that if he follows the rules of his own game, he will find Daniel again in a safe place.

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.

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.

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.

Soon after, the timer for Matthews's game expires and a nearby safe unlocks to reveal Daniel inside, bound and breathing in an oxygen mask.

[3] Producers needed a script for a sequel [4] but James Wan and Leigh Whannell, director and writer of Saw, were working on Universal Pictures's Dead Silence.

[5] Bousman was initially upset when he heard about his script's similarities to Saw, and feared at first that Lionsgate's call was due to complaints of plagiarism.

Overall, the framework of The Desperate had a similar bleak, disgusting atmosphere and a twist ending, which is why the executives found parallels in the script's style.

All the previous film's crew members returned: editor Kevin Greutert, cinematographer Armstrong, and composer Charlie Clouser.

[14] 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.

[24] The first shot, which involved shooting police cars and a SWAT van driving around the industrial docklands outside the soundstage,[25] was filmed on April 29, 2005 in Toronto.

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.

[7] 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.

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.

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.

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 could be filmed crawling inside.

The original teaser poster showing two bloody, severed fingers, representing the Roman numeral, II, was rejected by the Motion Picture Association of America.

[39] Johnny Loftus from AllMusic gave the soundtrack two and a half out of five stars, writing, "The remixer and occasional NIN member's music was overdone, mysterious, tense, and capably chilling, just like the horror-camp of the film itself.

"[36] Mudvayne's song "Forget to Remember" was released as a single for both its original album and the soundtrack, and the video was also directed by Bousman.

[40] Saw II was released on DVD, VHS, and Universal Media Disc on February 14, 2006, through Lions Gate Home Entertainment.

[56] 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".

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".

[59] 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".

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".