Along with the iPod, UGG boots and Eminem, the early-mid 2000s was an era ruled by an overwhelming slew of some of the most graphic and depraved gore-filled horror pictures in cinema history. As the US invaded Iraq at the same time as audiences tuned into 24 every week to watch Jack Bauer torture suspected terrorists, these bloody horror features were churned out on a conveyor belt to consumers who craved the increasingly shocking brutality at a moment of rapid desensitization. It was the era of Hostel (2005), The Human Centipede (2009) and the Final Destination series (2000 - 2011). And it was arguably the first time that it was socially acceptable in mainstream public consciousness to admit to gaining enjoyment from such sadistic forms of entertainment.
This morally bankrupt moment in media history birthed the horror subgenre dubbed ‘torture porn’ which, as the name suggests, refers to films which have the sole aim of creating scenes of human bodily mutilation as sadistic and graphic as possible. These films turned extreme violence and gore into magnificent spectacle, revelling in the butchery. And in the case of franchises, they often produced new instalments at a rapid rate to satisfy the increasingly perverse and desensitized audience who craved their next hit.
And arguably the apex of the subgenre; the filthy, bloody gem at its centre, is the Saw franchise. It was the grimy, low-budget tale of a fictional barbaric serial killer known as the ‘Jigsaw killer’, who put victims inside elaborately constructed traps or ‘tests’ designed to push them to the edge of human resistance and to subject them to some of the most heinous ways to be injured or die that the human imagination could possibly dream up if they ‘fail’. The indie hit was like ecstasy to insatiable, bloodthirsty horror audiences and it rapidly grew into an untameable beast of a franchise. Saw was released in 2004 and until 2010, there would be a new sequel released every single year without fail.
By the time Saw: The Final Chapter (also known as Saw: 3D) rolled around in 2010, we were emerging out of the darkness and moral depravity of the first decade of the 21st century and with the end of the Iraq war in sight, into a time which placed far greater emphasis on morality and empathy. And so, the franchise would take an extended hiatus until Jigsaw (2017), a prequel to the series which underperformed and later Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021), a failed attempt at reinvigorating interest in the series by spinning it off in a new direction.
But against all odds, on Friday 29th September 2023, Saw X, the 10th entry in the often-forgotten franchise is being released. And I could not possibly be more excited. Because I, against all odds and better judgement, love the Saw franchise.
But first, how did we get here?
The origins of horror cinema in its purest essence, and the human craving for the adrenaline that comes from being frightened or terrorised, go back about as far as cinema itself. There are seminal works from the early 20th century that remain deeply influential like Nosferatu (1922). However, the journey to Jigsaw really begins in the 1950s, in the time of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), Godzilla (1954), House of Wax (1953) and Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). The idea of supernatural anomalies begins to intrigue audiences and here, the first seeds are planted for what will slowly grow into one of entertainment’s biggest phenomena.
In the 60s, horror becomes stylised. It's the decade that is home to some of the most striking works of horror cinema from legendary auteurs who solidified some of the primal, visceral elements which still fuel horror today; from Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960) and Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby (1968) to Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968) and, though deeply subversive and perhaps not seen as a horror in the traditional sense, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966), which all horrors to follow certainly owe a debt to.
This, of course, leads us with a bang into what countless film analysts and historians still pertain, and rightfully so, to be the peak of horror as a cinematic genre. It’s the age of genre-defining mainstream hits like William Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) and Brian DePalma’s Carrie (1976), as well as slightly campier offerings like The Omen (1976). But it also offered perversely disturbing entries like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), international offerings like Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977), which kicked off giallo as a subgenre in of itself (which would popularise the slasher before American filmmakers caught on), the invention of the summer blockbuster in Spielberg’s Jaws (1977) and the apex point of horror’s relationship with sci-fi in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979). The decade is an embarrassment of riches, and the genre would never be the same.
However, where the 70s are arguably horror’s artistic peak and cemented it as a cornerstone of the industry, it is the following decade when, for better or worse, horror goes big business. Because by the 80s, there is an insatiable hunger for horror which, in the era of Richard Ramirez and Jeffrey Dahmer, is fed, among other things, by the all-out slasher craze. We get unique offerings like Hellraiser (1987), Sleepaway Camp (1983), Gremlins (1984), more genre and tonal experimentation like The Evil Dead (1981) and Evil Dead II (1987) which establish Sam Raimi, and masterpieces like Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) and Carpenter’s The Thing (1982). However, in a move that arguably seals the fate of the horror genre and dams it to be seen forevermore as a mindless and less artistically minded genre, the 1980s sees a phenomena I like to call sequalitis take its hold and infect the industry.
Sequels were not a new concept, and there were of course a small handful of sequels to smash-hit horror features in the 70s like Damien: Omen II (1978) and Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977). However, it was truly in the 80s when studios got wise to just how easily they could secure a continuous stream of income, by slapping roman numerals in front of properties already beloved by consumers, and reel them in time and time again, even with sub-par outputs. More often than not, the original filmmakers had little or nothing to do with the sequels and this quantity over quality methodology ripped through the industry at large. However, it has never been nearly as prevalent in any other genres as it has with horror.
While there are obvious exceptions to the rule like James Cameron’s iconic Aliens (1986), and there are of course merits you can find scattered through almost all subpar sequels, the 80s is the era of Halloween II (1981), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988) and Halloween 5: The Revenge of Michael Myers (1989), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2 (1986), Hellbound: Hellraiser II (1988), The Omen III: The Final Conflict (1981) and Psycho II (1983), Psycho III (1986) and Bates Motel (Psycho 4) (1987).
The decade also, most notably, saw the birth of what would become some of horror’s most persistent slasher franchises. This includes A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and its first four sequels; A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge (1985), A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987), A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child. It also includes Child’s Play (1988), which would go on to have multiple sequels in subsequent decades and, perhaps most notably, Friday the 13th (1980) and its first EIGHT sequels (brace yourselves); Friday the 13th Part 2 (1981), Friday the 13th Part III (1982) (yes, the switch from numbers to Roman numerals drives me insane too), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (1984) (spoiler alert – it was absolutely NOT the final chapter), Friday the 13th: A New Beginning (1985), Friday the 13th part VI: Jason Lives (1986), Friday the 13th part VII: The New Blood (1988) and Friday the 13th part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989).
The 1990s sees a personality crisis grip the genre, as it both continues to conform to the model of the 80s, while also breeding rebellion and experimentation. Still being bogged down by the infectious sequalitis, it is half comprised of a sleazy, mindless onslaught of sequels with Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare (1991) and Wes Craven’s New Nightmare (1994), Halloween: The Curse of Michael Myers (1995) and Halloween H20: 20 years Later (1998), Child’s Play 2 (1990), Child’s Play 3 (1991) and Bride of Chucky (1998), Hellraiser: III: Hell on Earth (1992) and Hellraiser: Bloodline (1996), Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III (1990) and The Return of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1995), Jason Goes to Hell: The Final Friday (1993), Psycho IV: The Beginning (1990), The Exorcist III (1990), Gremlins 2 (1990) and The Omen VI: The Awakening (1991).
However, its other half is comprised of subversive experimentation in what the genre can be, the likes of which arguably hadn’t been seen since the 70s. There’s the subgenre defining The Blair Witch Project (1999), revolutionary Japanese horror cinema like Ringu (1998), and Audition (1998), prestigious horror dramas like Silence of the Lambs (1991), and The Sixth Sense (1999), formative examples of socially and politically ambitious features like Candyman (1992) and, of course, the generation-defining, ingenious blend of horror, meta comedy and satire in Wes Craven’s Scream (1996).
However, it’s worth noting that some of these still got the franchise treatment soon after like with Scream 2 (1997) and many later Scream instalments in the 2000s, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh (1995), Candyman: Day of the Dead (1999), Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2 (2000) and even Hannibal (2001) and Red Dragon (2002), which saw Anthony Hopkins reprises his Silence of the Lambs role as Hannibal Lecter.
All off this spits us out into the post Y2K, post 9/11, birth of the century hellscape which, as previously descripted, can be best characterised by a moral bankruptcy and a newfound bloodlust. Half a century deep into horror as a mainstream cinematic genre and shadowed by the war on terror, a prevalent MTV-inspired sexualisation of culture and existential ponderings on what form this new century would take on, mass desensitization can be observed. Audiences were no longer thrilled by outlandish supernatural stories in a time which favoured realism due to atrocities being plastered across TVs. And slashers were a bore since increased, militant policing efforts had brought on the decline of the serial killer. And so, the search for a more and more shocking horror format took a page from Guantanamo Bay's book and went further beyond previous unspoken boundaries of what was acceptable in the mainstream, resulting in torture porn.
And this brief history of 51 years of horror cinema contextualizes the birth of Jigsaw.
Saw (2004), was an original, collaborative creative output from two men who would go on to become some of the signature names in 2000s and 2010s horror; James Wan and Leigh Whannell. The story was the perverse brainchild of both of them, with Whannell writing the screenplay and Wan directing. So, aided by an extremely low, shoestring budget, it was a twisted match made in heaven.
Our story begins when oncologist Dr Lawrence Gordon and photographer Adam Stanheight wake up in a filthy and dilapidated, dingy bathroom that feels like some sort of eery liminal space from the darkest corner of your imagination. Lawrence and Adam are each chained to one wall by their ankle and have no idea how they got there, or why the bloody dead corpse of a man is already laying in the middle of the floor between them.
With pre-mass-technological-advance analogue clues left in the room for them to discover and decipher like a cassette tape, polaroid pictures and a ticking clock counting down to their doom, the pair quickly learn that they are the latest victims to be trapped and ‘tested’ by the infamous ‘Jigsaw killer’. For the majority of the film we cut between Adam and Lawrence, attempting to work out how to escape their own trap and why they have been put there, and the police investigation hot on Jigsaw’s trail. We learn of Jigsaw's reputation for abducting carefully selected subjects and putting them through elaborately constructed ‘tests’ or traps, in which the aim is to teach the victim a lesson in morality or force them to be more grateful for their life and not take it for granted.
This is what is so uniquely twisted about the basic premise of Saw. Because, while featuring some of the most stomach-churning violence and body mutilation ever seen on screen, there is still an idea that there is a precise and purposeful methodology to the acts. And even more disturbing, whether you buy into it at all or not, that this killer who subjects people to the grimmest of fates, is doing so, in his own disturbed way, for their own good. He wants to 'help' them.
A primary example can be found in what has emerged as perhaps the most iconic image from the franchise; what is referred to by fans as the ‘reverse bear trap’. This refers to a scene in the film, depicting one of Jigsaw’s previous ‘tests’ of a young woman named Amanda, who is recounting her experience to police after being one of the rare few to survive a trap. As she narrates the experience, we see Amanda wake up strapped to a chair in a similarly dark and grimy room with an elaborate mechanical device strapped to her head and mouth (pictured at the top of this article). The wide-eyed Amanda begins to thrash about in a state of panic.
She is silenced when a small television in the room turns on and begins to play a fuzzy VCR tape recording, depicting a distinctive looking doll with black hair, a chalk white face, and red spirals painted on each of its cheeks. The voice of the Jigsaw killer is ominously played, making the doll appear to be speaking as it offers the bone-chilling line which would go on to define the franchise “Hello Amanda. You don’t know me but, I know you. I want to play a game.”
This avatar for Jigsaw explains the ‘game’ by telling her that when the clock runs out, the device which is hooked into her lower and upper jawbones, will rip her face completely open, killing her in the process. As he says, “think of it like a reverse bear trap.” He explains that the only way to prevent this happening is to get the key which unlocks the device. The same key which can only be found inside the stomach of the live man on the floor in front of her.
Sealed with “make your choice”, this establishes Jigsaw’s delusional thesis; that even though he has abducted this person and strapped them into a death device, he is merely presenting them with a choice, and putting their fate in their own hands. The choice in this case being to brutally murder another human to assure your own survival or to die violently.
When Amanda successfully unlocks the device with only seconds to spare after viciously stabbing the man repeatedly, tearing open his stomach and retrieving the key, she breaks down in tears. Then, in objectively one of the funniest moments in cinematic history, the creepy doll, as previously seen speaking to her on the tape, wheels into the room on a tiny tricycle. It’s a marriage of brutality and pure camp sensibilities in a delightfully striking fashion. Jigsaw's voice can be heard again, congratulating her for surviving and telling her that “most people are so ungrateful to be alive. But not you, not anymore.” And, most chillingly of all, He is right. Because as Amanda sits in the police station traumatised and with scars tracing her mouth from the ordeal, the self-admitted drug addict who is now clean tells police “He helped me”.
With effective twists and turns, stomach-churning body horror, innovative break-neck editing to cleverly conceal some of the places where the low budget might have otherwise been obvious and a kick-ass score, the film made for a 1.2-million-dollar budget which was very nearly released straight to DVD, earned a staggering 103 million dollars globally.
With Jigsaw fever gripping the nation and Saw hitting the depraved sweet spot of audiences everywhere,
Saw II premiered a year later and thus, solidified the grand tradition of the decade - being guaranteed an annual offering of new Saw traps.
But here is the real reason why I love the Saw franchise. Because while it’s the pinnacle of torture porn and became so consistently successful off the back of this, the series is really a trojan horse. Because you come for the gore, but you stay for the lore.
Where Saw (2004) is relatively straightforward with a killer twist at its conclusion, Saw II (2005) is the ingenius inception point of what the series would become. And that is a complex and convoluted web of intricate lore, overlapping timelines, endless retcons and countless twists that gives Inception (2010) and Twin Peaks (1990 - 2017) a run for their money.
With Saw II having twists which recontextualise your view of events in Saw, Saw III (2006) and Saw IV (2007) happening simultaneously, integral parts of Saw V (2008) taking place before and during the events of Saw, Saw II, Saw III and Saw IV and further recontextualizing them, Jigsaw (2017) taking place before Saw, multiple flashbacks, flashbacks within flashback and retcons on already-shown flashbacks throughout all of the films and the upcoming Saw X (2023) taking place Between Saw and Saw II, it’s an absolute labyrinth. While the films' surface presentation and marketing were no doubt intended to entice the general public for their yearly hit of torture porn, the stories were undoubtedly made to appease the small but loyal group of Saw fanatics who became entrenched in understanding its entangled lore.
John Kramer is the key figure at the centre of the franchise and the series increasingly fills in the gaps of his life story and the factors which made this drove this seemingly docile older man to become Jigsaw. However, throughout the series he has many accomplices to his work and others who take on the Jigsaw mantle, most of whom are pre-existing characters in the franchise who are revealed to be working for Jigsaw in truly jaw-dropping twists years before Pretty Little Liars (2010 – 2017) would popularise the ‘this character has been secretly working for the villain’ twist for a younger audience. I don’t think I have ever had as much fun with a series as I have attempting to piece together the fractured Saw puzzle of revelations and retcons.
And fun, as sick as it may seem, really is the optimum word I use in relation to my love of the series. It’s an enthralling experience. Because even in the case of the extreme gore and bodily mutilation, what sets Saw apart from its peers like Final Destination is an increasingly inventive creativity in how it is used. Saw (2004)’s traps are more simplistic in their horrors like the reverse bear trap which threatens to rip Amanda’s jaw open, a man forced to crawl through a maze of barbed wire or Adam and Lawrence being faced with the option of having to saw off their respective feet with a blunt saw (hence the name) to escape their confines.
However, as Saw II presents a house of horrors where a group of strangers with one thing in common are trapped to face a myriad of specific tests to retrieve an antidote to a poison they have all been injected with and Saw III sees a vengeful man grieving the loss of his son who was killed in an accident be subjected to a multiple-round test in getting him to save those complicit in his son’s death and let go of his vengeance, we enter into the wonderfully convoluted nature of the Jigsaw traps.
We only continue to get more meticulous and intricate as we journey further on. The traps become longer and more cleverly staged character pieces, arguably peaking with Saw V’s multi-layered act of retribution on five people who, each in their own way, were responsible for a building fire with suspicious circumstances which led to the death of eight people. It illustrates one of the other core principles of the series which is, whether this may seem bizarre or not for such violent stories, a fairly strong left-leaning political compass. The series repeatedly targets corrupt authority figures and those who play a role in oppressing the working class, from cops to health insurance agents. Saw VI’s brutal punishment of the insurance agent in question is packed with multiple, carefully laid micro-twists and a brilliant subversion of the deep corruption of the American health insurance industry. He is forced, in much more obvious and visceral ways, to truly play God in deciding who lives or dies, as an illustration of the fact that this is what he’s been doing for his entire career, only until now he’s had the privilege of disassociating from the reality of it.
I think the deeply underwhelming nature of Saw: The Final Chapter (2010), which was desperately clinging to the last remnants of the torture porn era and was underbaked in its execution, though containing some wonderful inclusions to the lore for Saw fans, is largely to blame for the way in which the legacy of the franchise has been underwritten. This was only further hurt by the poorly received prequel Jigsaw (2017) and distant spin-off Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021), solidifying the slow, wheezing death of what was once a beloved staple of the first decade of the century.
However, the grizzly, multi-film mosaic of the Saw franchise remains an absolutely, horrifyingly delightful gem of a bizarre, depraved era in media history. With consistent remarkable twists, equal parts creative and depraved body horror setpieces, a twisted, sprawling timeline and a legitimately compelling, morally and politically complex core, the Saw franchise is truly singular.
So, as we approach the release of Saw X, the tenth entry in the series (though I have to acknowledge that they did cheat slightly by including Spiral to make this the tenth), I urge anyone who can stomach it, to either discover or re-discover a truly remarkable cinematic artefact.
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