The first Saw film is not about ultra-gory traps, not really. Originally released in 2004, the low-budget horror-thriller marked the splashy debut of major Hollywood talents James Wan and Leigh Whannell, and sparked one of the most culturally influential and financially successful horror franchises of all time. 

But in what way exactly did Saw influence the horror sphere? How did its many sequels (at one time pumped out one year after the other) synthesize and expand on the original? Did semi-reboot Jigsaw, released in 2017, attempt to rewrite, recalcify, or correct any perceived missteps? Will 2021’s Spiral: From the Book of Saw try and do the same? In short: Does the Saw franchise honor Saw?

RELATED: Exclusive: 'Spiral: From the Book of Saw' Clip Teases Chris Rock's Reluctant Team-Up With Max Minghella In short: Nope! Saw was considered a vanguard of the rather derogatorily named “torture porn” horror movement of the 2000s, with other contemporaries including Eli Roth’s Hostel, Rob Zombie’s The Devil’s Rejects, and the American imports of the extreme horror scenes in France and East Asia (i.e. High Tension and Three... Extremes). Some critics justified and arted up this critic-defined movement by contextualizing it within that era’s proliferation, and even justification, of torture in the name of counter-terrorism; we share images of Abu Gharib cynically, casually but bitterly, and want this level of visceral nihilism in our entertainment, too. 

Cary Elwes in Saw
Image via Lionsgate

The problem is, I don’t really see that in the original Saw. Firstly, Jigsaw/John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is defined, both by himself and his victim Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes), as a moralist, a believer of the inherent value of life, a purveyor in second chances and redemption stories, no matter how hard-fought. Yes, he provides the paths for these positive steps in the most negative of ways — making sinners unwillingly participate in games and traps involving severe sacrifices with the consequence of death — but the justification does not come from a meaningless, The Strangers-esque “because you were home” place. Jigsaw is a big ol’ sap who’s tasted the edge of life and decided he wasted the center, and wants to do the same for others. 

Also, Saw isn’t even that violent! Like so many other films that prompt controversy and moral panic, there is an implication of violence permeating throughout the film, but not a ton of explicit relishing in the gory stuff. Yes, there are some inserts of hands picking up organs; yes, a guy gets blasted by a bunch of top-down shotguns; yes, you see a burnt-up corpse on the ground. But so many of the film’s iconic images of violence — the reverse bear-trap mask, the titular sawing off a limb — either don’t actually happen or happen mostly off-screen, respectively. Saw wasn’t even constructed to be an out-and-out gore show; according to the filmmakers in the DVD special features, they went back and purposefully shot some of the bloodier inserts on the advice of distributors who wanted the film to stand out and court some controversy. That worked, alright, but especially compared to some of the content you can see on an average network TV crime drama, Saw’s “carnage” almost plays quaintly now.

So what was Saw constructed to be? In short: a psychological chamber thriller. Two dudes chained up, one dead dude on the floor, an exploration of sin, culpability, and the limits of human perseverance, all wrapped up in a tidy, twist ending bow that metaphorically and literally shuts the door on the story needed to be told. Emotional pains are heightened to the point of physical action, but the physical action itself is not what motivates the decision of either Jigsaw or his participants. It’s a contained film, a tight narrative, a plot with a welcomely narrowed scope and a welcomely broad emotional impact. It feels, in the best way possible, like watching a gripping piece of theater that happens to have some bloodshed thrown in for good measure. As I leave, chatting with fellow goers in the lobby, I feel satisfied with the journeys I’ve witnessed, and even a little revitalized by the issues it asks me to explore. It is a thoroughly concluded film.

Shawnee Smith in Saw III
Image via Lionsgate

But in Hollywood, and especially in horror, nothing’s concluded. Which brings us to these dang Saw sequels. They certainly follow the rules for horror sequels as established in excellent horror sequel Scream 2: The body counts are bigger, and the death scenes are much more elaborate and much gorier. It’s just, like, that’s all they are. None of the other facets of the original film seem to be honored, heightened, or expanded on. Instead, the Saw sequels tend to feel inspired by all the “torture porn” rigamarole surrounding the film, rather than the film itself.

I’ve tried a couple times to marathon the Saw series, either for this very website or just for funsies, and find very quickly what a dispiriting task it is. Gone is the emphasis on morality, on the “chance” of improvement or learning a lesson. In its place is a perverse emphasis on violence, on carnage, on abject nihilism. The hook of these films is no longer “what would you do in this situation?” Instead, it is “watch these puny humans suffer and die in increasingly agonizing ways.” 

Case in point: One of the more well-regarded sequels, and the last one with screenplay credit to Whannell, Saw III, is predicated upon a man named Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) whose son was killed in a drunk-driving accident. He’s brought through a house of horrors where, one by one, every person responsible for the death is presented to Jeff in a horrific trap, where he has the choice to save them or let them die in an act of inadvertent, passive justice. Over and over, we watch Jeff pace and sweat and squabble and at times literally do nothing while horrendous images like “a fully naked woman blasted with ice water” or “a guy drowning in dead pig slop” rattle our brains; over and over, these people wind up dying. This is not any sense of propulsive storytelling, nor is it in any way violence with a point. It’s dramatically inert, and it’s tonally suffocating! 

There is, I suppose, a sense of “power” in watching character after character die in an aggressively constructed trap without even the pretense of “they could escape,” but it is one that fundamentally shifts the property’s storytelling DNA and relationship with its audience from “subsumed within the character’s journeys” to “omniscient, hateful God.” And that’s not what Jigsaw’s about, man! Life is worth living, not wasting; doesn’t anyone remember from him telling us that over and over again in the motion picture Saw?

Costas Mandylor in Saw VI
Image via Lionsgate

Gone, too, is the first film’s welcome sense of containment, of feeling like a crisp one-act play, of telling a single story from beginning to end. Instead, the Saw franchise becomes infamously knotted up its own dang butt, folding its timeline in on itself over and over, retconning just about everything with bonkers flashbacks, and turning nearly every notable character into some kind of Jigsaw acolyte in the effort to continue that character’s power and mimic the game-changing twist of the first film. There’s something weirdly admirable about this move into arcana and mythology instead of more self-contained stories with gory traps, almost assuring Lionsgate that they’re breeding a fanbase of rabid obsessives and weeding out casual scary moviegoers (which might account for the film’s slipping box office returns throughout the original franchise run). But I cannot stress enough how unpleasant it makes these watches in modern eyes; how nonsensical, incoherent, and ultimately pointless it makes many of the entries; how annoying it is to watch an original film marked by its narrowed scope become so big and broad and confusing and inaccessible.

To try and avoid this franchise’s slide into empty nihilism, I do want to highlight one Saw sequel I do return to over and over again, finding nearly as much quality in it as I do in the original. Saw II, developed from an originally unrelated script by multiple entry-helmer Darren Lynn Bousman and rewritten by Whannell, places a heavy emphasis on morality, on moving past an original sin, on the power of redemption. It has two separate “closed-room theater” sequences going on — one with the house full of horrors, one with Donnie Wahlberg facing off against Jigsaw. Its twist and ending revelations feel explicitly motivated by these emotional devastations, resulting in the feeling not of unending darkness, but of a potential candle snuffed out by man’s folly (am I saying Saw II is constructed like, and as inspiring as, a Greek tragedy? Of course I am!). There’s more violence than the first, but even then it all feels grounded and intentional, with its most cringe-inducing, iconic trap not involving bloodshed in any way. And while it does begin the franchise’s out-and-out backslide into needless timeline-trickery, there is no denying the power of when it collapses into the first film in ways that don’t stop the drama in its tracks, but rather expands it. 

Saw II is, thus far, Saw’s solely successful sequel, one that understands why it worked and expanded upon it simply. Hopefully, Spiral: From the Book of Saw has studied the book well, and becomes the second.

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