An in depth look at Saw Traps

“By creating a legacy, by living a life worth remembering, you become immortal.”

Amanda Franklin (Saw 2)

Every Saw movie consists of an elaborate web of traps designed by Jigsaw to be a difficult, yet most of the time survivable, test for the subject. Unfortunately due to the fact that there are so many traps and so many complicated connections we cannot discuss them all in detail. I will also try not to repeat myself from earlier posts too much, and therefore will not be talking too much about Amanda.

One trap however must be discussed in comparison to the reverse bear trap that Amanda escaped from. The Venus Fly Trap, as Jigsaw called it, is a trap that is easily compared to the Reverse Bear Trap that Jigsaw put on Amanda. They are theoretically very similar traps, there is a large trap on your head/neck area and you have one minute once the timer starts to get it off or you die an unpleasant death. Jigsaw told both Amanda and Michael where their keys were and exactly what was needed in both cases. In my opinion though, Amanda’s trap was much easier to escape from for one reason. Amanda’s key was inside a live person who could not move, while Michael’s key was surgically placed in his eye. This difference should not mean much in the grand scheme of things, however personally I believe that cutting into your own eye is much more difficult than cutting open someone else. The fact that Amanda survived and Michael did not could be attributed to her “survival instinct” as Jigsaw put it, however I believe that a part of the reason Amanda lived is because she did not have to hurt herself.

Another trap that stood out to me was the Pound of Flesh trap. The game took place in a room divided by two metal grates in the middle. Between these two grates was one large scale. On each side of the room was a knife, a meat cleaver and a tube. Each victim had a device on their heads with screws pointing at their temples. The goal was to put more flesh onto the scale than the other person before the time ran out. Whoever put more on the scale was allowed to live, while the other was killed by the device on their head. The reason I liked this trap was not its design, it was because of one of the victims, Simone.

Simone and Eddie knew each other, they worked at the bank together and they loaned money to people they knew would be unable to pay back the loans. They were both rather horrible people, and this trap was designed to test them. Eddie was a very fat man, and he decided to cut off some of his excessive fat with the knife in order to add more to the scale than Simone. But he did not account for how absolutely bad ass Simone is. After wasting a lot of her time panicking, Simone realized she would die if she didn’t do anything, and in her desperation she picked up the meat cleaver, chopped off her arm and deposited it onto the scale at the last minute. This was enough that Eddie was the one who died and not her. I disliked watching the majority of this trap, but Simone was super cool.

The last trap I will discuss is the Antidote Safe from Saw 2. This is an excellent example of a trap that could be easily escaped if the people in the game would only have worked together. In the tape, Jigsaw states that the code to the safe is “hidden in the back of your minds”. The “your” indicates that they have to work together, indicating that the code is either something they all know, or it’s written on them somewhere. Presumably the back of their heads. I like this trap because it was more of a logic puzzle than a trap that tests your will to live in the form of pain. I thought it was interesting that none of the people in the Game even tried to figure out the riddle until the end. Then the guy who did figure it out decided that killing everyone was the way to go about getting the code. I mean seriously, over react much?

A lot of the Saw traps are escapable or solvable if the person trapped would just take a second to relax and think about what Jigsaw is telling them. At the end of the day, those in the Saw traps need to realize that Jigsaw’s goal isn’t necessarily to kill them, it’s to test them in ways they have never been tested before. If they were to realize this, I think more people would escape. That being said, the majority of the Saw traps are equal levels of extremely unpleasant, disgusting, and definitely not where you would want to find yourself on your average Thursday morning, so their panic is probably justified.

To be continued…

“The rules of our game have been made very clear. You need to abide by those rules.”

Jigsaw (Saw 3)

An In depth look at the Saw Series

“The Game has a new design.”

John Kramer (Saw The Final Chapter)

Each of the eight Saw movies can be described by the same basic formula: There is a Game, the police want to catch Jigsaw and there is a twist about who Jigsaw is at the end. That’s it. Every single movie has that structure at it’s base, to the point that they become predictable after Saw 3. I admit, if they aren’t something you’re interested in, they could get boring. But for me, the reasons behind the Jigsaw murders and how the traps are survivable keep me entertained enough to watch all of the movies more than once.

There is also another thing I noticed while watching the Saw movies that really fascinated me. See, when you’re watching the movies, you find yourself hoping Jigsaw escapes capture. You want the people in the traps to get out alive, but ultimately they will probably die or you will never see them again, so you don’t get too attached. The same can be said for the detectives since nearly every person who ever worked on the Jigsaw case dies. As a result, the only characters you see consistently are those such as John Kramer, Amanda Young, Detective Hoffman and Jill Tuck. All of whom could be considered to be on Jigsaw’s “team”. The viewers form a sort of attachment with these characters, because these are the characters they know the most about.

The fact that Jigsaw has a reason behind killing people also aids in the viewer’s opinion of him. For example, in Saw 4, Officer Rigg is forced to put a man (Ivan) into a Jigsaw trap. This man is a serial killer and rapist who enjoys brutally murdering women for his own pleasure. Though this may be a morbid thought, I would prefer to be killed by Jigsaw than Ivan. If Jigsaw was to put me in a trap, I would have the chance to survive and I would know that he does not relish his power over me. On the other hand, Ivan would have kidnapped me and hurt me for entirely selfish reasons and that seems like a much more unpleasant way to die to me. This distinction between senseless murder and … shall we say… murder as an unfortunate side effect …. allows the viewers to sympathize with Jigsaw’s cause and keep them invested in the movies.

While the individual movies focus on the Games and the police, the series as a whole focuses on Jigsaw and his apprentices. The series draws people in by revealing new twists relating to Jigsaw. They reveal new apprentices and different aspects of the timeline in different movies as a way to manipulate how the audience views each movie. They use time jumps to show things that have happened and that will happen in a way that makes it difficult to know where the scene you are watching fits into the timeline. This adds another layer to the movies, forcing you to watch them more than once in order to truly understand what is happening.

I am not sure whether the people who created Saw did so with the intent that the audience would sympathize with Jigsaw and his apprentices, but you do end up rooting for them. It is possible that they didn’t want you to like any of the characters, because honestly the movies are so confusing that that could be the prank they were going for and I wouldn’t be surprised. I mean, were we really supposed to like Hoffman? That guy was obnoxious and he looked exactly like Strahm so I kept getting them confused. I mean look at them, they’re practically identical and believe me when I say they have the same personality (obnoxious loud angry white guy with brown hair).

Overall I believe the Saw movies to be a roller coaster ride that everyone should take part in just once. They are perfect for anyone who wants a horror movie that’s slightly realistic, has some depth, but is also hilariously terrible at the same time. That being said, they probably aren’t for everyone. If you dislike blood, serial killers, pigs, and generally terrible horror films they probably aren’t for you. If you would still like to take part in the excellence that is Saw, you could certainly read the plots for the movies. You could also go to the Saw fan website which allows you to study Saw in as much or as little detail as you please.

“Fear. Suffering. Death. You haven’t seen anything yet.”

John Kramer (Saw The Final Chapter)

An In depth look at Amanda Franklin

“You’d be surprised what tools can save a life”

– Amanda (Saw 3)

Amanda’s journey through the Saw movies was relatively short lived, she didn’t have much of a roll in Saw and she died in Saw 3 and 4 so her time on screen afterward was fairly limited. That being said, while she was on screen she was super fun to watch and she quickly became my favorite character.

Amanda is shown in Saw 1 as a victim, the only known survivor of a Jigsaw trap. Until her, everyone else had died. The trap she escaped was described by Jigsaw as a “reverse bear trap”. It hooked into her jaw and was locked in the back of her head so she couldn’t take it off. If she was unable to get the trap off before the timer ran out the trap would basically rip her face in half. Jigsaw told her that she would have one minute once the timer started to get the key out of the intestines of her “dead” cellmate. Amanda ended up killing her cellmate to save herself and she got the trap off just before the timer went off.

After her brush with death, Amanda valued her life more. It was this experience with Jigsaw that helped her get clean, stop just existing and start living. She also came to worship Jigsaw in a way. She believed completely in his mission and would do anything to help him, resulting in her becoming his apprentice.

In Saw 2 we see more of how Amanda is willing to help Jigsaw. It is revealed that she helped him set up the main trap in Saw 1 and that her being in the trap in Saw 2 was in order to make sure the detectives son got out alive. In fact, Amanda entered Saw 2 already having taken the antidote to the poisonous gas the other survivors had been exposed to. In Saw 2, Amanda does not show the effects of the poison like the other people in the trap, proving that she wasn’t there to be tested.

Saw 2 ends with Amanda trapping the detective in the same room where the trap in Saw 1 took place. She states that this detective is her “first test subject” indicating that Jigsaw is now allowing her more freedom since he has predicted that he will die soon. The detective does survive his trap and goes after Amanda, which in her mind proves that he learned nothing from the tests she and Jigsaw put him through.

This is a turning point for Amanda, she is now torn between worshiping Jigsaw and his message and not believing that his methods work. At the start of Saw 3 we are shown a series of tests where the subjects did not survive. The first was the Classroom Trap. A man was chained in the center of a classroom. He has one minute to rip the chains out of his body and run out the door before the timer goes off and a nail bomb explodes. The man died as he was unable to get all of the chains out in time (honestly that’s understandable, it looked rather terrible). However, in order for the police to open the door to get to his body, they had to cut it open because it had been welded shut. The man couldn’t have escaped even if he had unchained himself, which is not Jigsaw’s typical MO. The second trap is called the Angel Trap. Detective Amanda Kerry was hooked into a trap with a leather harness that left her suspended over the ground. In front of her was a beaker of acid that held a key to the harness. If she did not reach the key in time the trap would pull her ribs out of her body. Detective Kerry was able to successfully get the key and unlock the device in time, but the trap was hooked into her ribs and she was unable to escape. Amanda then emerges from the shadows, proving to the audience that while it is possible that Jigsaw wanted to test Kerry, it was Amanda who executed the trap and it was her who was senselessly killing people.

It is unclear whether or not Amanda thought Jigsaw knew what she was doing, however it soon became apparent that he had figured it out since the Trap in Saw 3 was also a test for her. Saw 3 shows how desperate Amanda is for Jigsaw’s attention and praise. It is her new life mission to be the best apprentice, to be his favorite. It is unclear whether she hopes to replace his wife Jill or if she has some sort of hero worship complex going on, but she is jealous of Lynn (the lady forced to keep Jigsaw alive). In the end, Amanda presumably failed her test because she could not stop herself from making things personal and killed Lynn out of jealousy. It is later revealed however, that Detective Hoffman (jigsaw’s other apprentice at the time) wrote her a note telling her to kill Lynn or Hoffman would tell Jigsaw that she was partially responsible for the miscarriage of his child. Amanda feared what would happen if Jigsaw knew this and she killed Lynn, sealing her own fate.

I really like Amanda’s character because she is an interesting form of crazy. I am also disappointed that I will never know what would have happened if she were to pass Jigsaw’s test. If she had survived how would things have gone differently? I hope we would have seen more of her. Her traps were inventive and she had hilarious lines, but alas it is not to be.

“I’m sorry, I know it’s hard to concentrate when your surrounded by so many things you could kill me with.”

Amanda (Saw 3)

An in depth look at the Saw Series

“Death is a surprise party. Unless, of course, you’re already dead on the inside.”

John Kramer (Saw)

The last two movies in the Saw series are vastly different. Saw The Final Chapter is pretty much a direct sequel from Saw 6, picking up pretty much exactly Saw 6 left off, while Jigsaw is a time jump.

Personally, I feel they should not have created Saw The Final Chapter because it was god awful. The majority of the movie was about characters I did not personally care about. Jill Tuck (Jigsaw’s wife) ratted out Detective Hoffman to the actual police, so all the work he put in killing FBI agents and framing Agent Strahm was rendered useless. I did like that Jill tried to kill Hoffman, but I had wanted Jill to take over as Jigsaw rather than Hoffman surviving and going after her. As a result, a lot of the movie was about Hoffman evading police and trying to kill Jill, even though that would solve literally none of his problems.

To make matters worse, Saw The Final Chapter didn’t even have any cool traps and the Game that was played was uninventive and boring. This random guy Brandon, who we’d never seen before, claimed to have survived a Jigsaw trap and he was going public with it and ended up making a lot of money from it. Fortunately for him (or unfortunately depending on how you choose to look at it) he had never actually been in a Jigsaw trap. Of course, Hoffman knows this and decided to create a game where he tested Brandon as a sort of punishment for lying and profiting off other peoples suffering. This game did not have any cool tarps and at the end Hoffman killed Brandon’s wife Laurie by incinerating her in a giant furnace. This was not only disgusting, but also entirely unnecessary since Laurie was the only one in the whole scheme who had no idea that her husband was lying. She was innocent.

Overall you could argue that this game represents how Hoffman’s mental state was deteriorating, but in my opinion the writers were just lazy. The movie was them throwing random stuff together because they had to. The way Saw 6 ended, Saw The Final Chapter had potential, however it really fell short and was pretty disappointing.

Jigsaw on the other hand, really exceeded expectations in a way. It is not without its flaws, but in the grand scheme of the Saw Series it is one of the better movies. The events of Jigsaw supposedly occur 10 years after John Kramer (the OG Jigsaw) died in Saw 3. As a result, all of the events from Saw 5 to Saw The Final Chapter have already happened. The Game is played with five people forced to undergo tests in an abandoned barn. In the first test one poor guy doesn’t wake up in time and is presumably killed by the buzz saws because he didn’t wake up for the instructions. Over the course of the rest of the game two more people die, leaving only Anna and this guy Ryan who got his leg cut off. John Kramer then comes into the room and tells gives Anna and Ryan their “key to freedom” (a shotgun shell) and puts it in the shotgun in the middle of the room. I like this test a lot because the keys to their shackles are in the shotgun shell and all they have to do is break open the shell and they can escape. Tragically for them, Anna instead tries to kill Ryan and they end up stuck in the room.

While this is happening Detective Halloran (not to be confused with Detective Hoffman of previous movies, why can’t they be more creative with names?) and some medical forensic scientists Eleanor and Logan attempt to find out where this new game is being played. They eventually locate the abandoned barn, but Eleanor and Logan think Halloran is Jigsaw while Halloran thinks they are Jigsaw so a fun chase ensues. This ends with Eleanor presumably escaping while Halloran and Logan end up in a Jigsaw trap. They are told they must confess their sins to survive and Halloran forces Logan to go first. Logan is seemingly killed and Halloran is forced to confess. This however is a prank and after Halloran “confesses” Logan gets up off the floor proving that he is not actually dead and is in fact the new Jigsaw.

The Game Halloran was investigating was actually a fake game. The one with Anna and Ryan was actually the first ever game played and their bodies were never found and the guy who seemed to die first was Logan. Jigsaw felt that his mistake in the amount of drugs he gave Logan should not have meant he had to die. As a result, Logan became Jigsaw’s first apprentice and it was him who was placing bodies for Halloran to find. This is a really cool twist because it was thought that the Game in Saw 1 was the first game, but now there is another apprentice to keep the Saw series going. Tragically Halloran died in his trap because he did not confess what Logan wanted him to.

Thus concludes an overview of the Saw Movies, however this is not the end of Saw related Blogs. There is still much to discuss.

“You think it’s over just because I am dead? It’s not over. The games have just begun.”

John Kramer (Saw 4)

An in depth look at the Saw Series

“How much blood will you shed to stay alive?”

John Kramer (Saw 3)

Continued from Make Your Choice pt. 2

I have to say that Saw 5 is my favorite movie in the whole series for all of the reasons. The only thing that could have possibly made Saw 5 better was killing detective Hoffman instead of Amanda in Saw 3 and making Amanda the center of the rest of the films, but overall Saw 5 was great. The Game was great, the traps were excellent and the people in the traps were actually competent and made smart choices rather than screaming the whole time.

Saw 5 is the Saw movie to watch if you want to see a classic Jigsaw game. There are five people stuck in a series of rooms and in theory they could all escape the traps alive. This is not how the movie goes of course, but Jigsaw does hint along the way about how the survivors could all work together and survive. The main goal of this game is to teach these five people how to work with others rather than stepping on anyone and everyone to get what they want. The reason they’re all there is because they all played a part in a terrible fire that killed several people. Only two people survive the traps as a result of their selfishness, however when they reach the last trap they realize how the Game could have gone and are both able to escape.

This is my favorite Game played because the people aren’t stupid, and it shows how if they had really thought about what Jigsaw was telling them everyone could survive. That being said, it is not the only reason this is my favorite Saw movie.

When the movie does not focus on the Game being played, it focuses on Detective Hoffman who is attempting to frame Agent Strahm for the Jigsaw murders. Now Agent Strahm escaped his trap from Saw 4 and realized that it was actually Hoffman who was Jigsaw now, but he needed proof, so he went off the grid. Hoffman used this to frame Strahm and then put Strahm in another trap which he was unable to escape from due to his own stupidity.

Overall I thought it was very clever of Hoffman to frame Strahm, and that combined with the Game that was played really makes Saw 5 my favorite of the Saw movies.

Saw 6, while not my favorite, is in a similar boat to Saw 3, where I like it but it’s got a few problems.

There was a pretty good game played in Saw 6, it actually had another of my favorite traps. However, a lot of the game was centered around a guy who worked in insurance choosing who lives and who dies, which as we have already discussed is not one of my favorite things. In addition the end of Saw 6 is messy and I’m not a huge fan of how things played out.

Overall it was hard to sympathize with the insurance guy because he actually had a chance to escape the game. A lot of people that Hoffman (Jigsaw) put in there didn’t even have a chance. They had to hope that Insurance guy didn’t choose to kill them, which I found to be obnoxious. What was cool though was that when John Kramer (OG Jigsaw) died he left Hoffman and his wife (Jill, who was pretty irrelevant until now) instructions for a new game (the game played by insurance guy). This is about the only redeeming quality of Saw 6 because it had the potential to be super cool, but they really ruined it.

Basically Insurance Guy eventually died because the family of a guy who he denied insurance decided they wanted to kill him, a ton of other people died because Insurance dude wasn’t a nice man and then Jill tried to kill Hoffman but she’s pathetic and she failed.

In my opinion they should have had Jill succeed and continue where her husband left off, but okay don’t do that I guess.

The only slightly redeeming quality of Saw 6 was the carousel trap. Basically there was a shotgun pointing at a carousel with six people on it. Every time the carousel stops, the shotgun will fire, unless Insurance dude stops it. However, Insurance dude can only stop the gun from firing twice, so four of the six people on the carousel will die. I like the trap because it was such a cool concept and it was done pretty well. The fact Insurance dude chose who lived was annoying, but it did teach him something so I guess it’s fine.

As you may have guessed this is to be continued with Saw The Final Chapter and Jigsaw coming up next…

“Live or die, make your choice.”

John Kramer (literally every Saw movie before every trap ever)

“You’re probably wondering where you are. I’ll tell you where you might be. You might be in the room you die in.“

-John Kramer (Saw 3)

If you haven’t seen all of the Saw movies and are planning on it you may not want to continue reading this since I am planning on going on discussing the Saw movies in great detail. That being said, if you have no interest in watching the greatest series of horror movies in the history of ever I guess that’s your own decision and I can’t change it for you, but buckle up for a lot of spoilers.

The greatest horror movie series ever begins in, what is my opinion, the most terrible way possible. In fact, I am surprised that the original Saw movie even got a sequel. It’s not the worst movie in the series, but I was not a fan. Saw was essentially about Jigsaw (John Kramer) and why he began killing, and a Game played by two terrible guys in a really disgusting bathroom. The majority of the movie was focused on these two guys (who were chained in opposite corners of the bathroom so they could not move very far) screaming at each other about how they want to get out. Overall it would have been pretty boring had they not added some scenes where the police discuss other random traps Jigsaw used on people. However, there were a few aspects of the movie that I did really like. For example, they introduced Amanda Franklin, the only known person to survive one of Jigsaw’s traps, at this time. We will discuss her more in part two. Saw also included an explanation of how the two screaming guys could have escaped the bathroom by recapping everything you hear through the movie. This is something I really liked because it emphasized the fact that Jigsaw did design the traps so people could escape. Jigsaw’s whole purpose in designing the traps is to teach those he believes do not value their lives, and I liked how they showed that in the first movie. I felt they did a good job introducing him and his purpose.

Saw 2 sits about in the middle of my scale when it comes to the Saw movies. It is neither terrible nor fantastic, but I do think it was better than the original Saw. Overall Saw 2 was interesting for a couple of reasons since the Game that was played not only tested the people inside, but the detective who was attempting to find them. Jigsaw placed a bunch of people who had been wrongly imprisoned by a detective into a house reinforced by steel, along with that detective’s son, and gassed them with a toxin that would kill them in two hours if they could not find an antidote. Another person of note to be in the house was Amanda Franklin, the only known person at that time to have survived a Jigsaw trap. My least favorite thing about this movie was that it was slightly predictable. The detective’s son had done nothing to show he does not value his life, so him being in the trap made no sense. Jigsaw would not want to test him, so I felt like the fact the boy survived was predictable. Overall the rest of the movie was okay, the only really notable thing that happened was Amanda being revealed to be Jigsaw’s apprentice, which explained a lot about Jigsaw’s plans that hadn’t made sense before.

To be continued…

“Most people are so ungrateful to be alive, but not you, not any more…”

– John Kramer (Saw 1)

An in depth look at the Saw Series

“When you’re in hell, only the devil can help you out”

– John Kramer

Continued from Make Your Choice pt. 1

Unlike the first two movies in the Saw series, Saw 3 was one of my favorites. That’s not to say that it was not without it’s faults, in fact it had many, however one aspect of the movie really saved it from a position at the bottom of my list. The Game played in Saw 3 was an artistic masterpiece that really showed Jigsaw’s genius. Not only was the Game a test for Jeff (a man who wanted vengeance for his son’s untimely death) and Laurie (Jeff’s wife) but also for Amanda, Jigsaw’s apprentice. In the beginning of the movie we are shown a number of traps that were set up by Amanda. The twist was that none of her traps were winnable. Amanda was slaughtering people rather than testing them, and of course Jigsaw found out. Overall, the trap for Laurie was uninteresting. Laurie had to keep Jigsaw alive, which didn’t add much to the movie except an extremely disgusting scene where she performed brain surgery on Jigsaw. Jeff’s trap however is where I begin to have problems with Saw 3. Jeff was given three traps, all of which centered around him either saving a person who was slightly responsible for his son’s death or killing them. I dislike these traps because the people Jeff let die didn’t have a chance to escape. I understand that Jigsaw was testing Jeff, but those three deaths seemed like senseless murder, something Jigsaw was strictly against.

Overall Saw 3 is only one of my favorite Saw movies because I liked how Jigsaw tested Amanda. To me it shows that he has standards and further proves that he does not stand for senseless murder.

The same cannot be said for Saw 4, my absolute least favorite of the Saw movies. Saw 4 is honestly just the worst thing ever. Not only did it not make sense, but they killed the only cool character and left you with two gross dudes that looked identical which was obnoxious. So overall Saw 4 was a tragedy and I would just recommend skipping it. It happens concurrently to Saw 3 which is just crazy, because at the end of Saw 4 you see that Jigsaw had known that Peter Strahm (one of the obnoxious identical guys) was going to be working on the Jigsaw case. But this is impossible because Strahm is only added to the case during this movie, so them creating a secret room with a trap for him is extremely unlikely as they had no way of knowing he would be there. That being said, they could explain it away because Detective Hoffman (the other obnoxious identical guy) was a Jigsaw Apprentice, but he didn’t know Strahm was coming until they already planned both the games in Saw 3 and Saw 4 and the game for Strahm was a part of the room Jigsaw died in in Saw 3. So really it was impossible for that to be a thing and it really ruined the whole movie because up until then at least the movies made some sort of sense and seemed possible.

Basically Saw 4 seemed possible until Strahm was shown to have his own trap, which was just silly. However this is not the only reason Saw 4 is at the bottom of my list. Often times the movies can redeem themselves with cool traps or interesting plot twists. Tragically Saw 4 had neither of these. The traps were poor at best, I mean some random SWAT dude was being “trained” to be the next apprentice by being put into his own game. He had to let people try and escape traps by themselves in order to get closer to some detective friends of his who were also in their own traps. One of these detective friends was Hoffman, and it was never clear how he got there until you find out he’s an apprentice, while the other is the detective from Saw 2 who’s son was in the game. Basically the only good part of Saw 4 was when Jigsaw impaled a lady and her husband with steel rods and told her to pull them out and free herself, killing her abusive husband in the process. I liked this trap since she was freeing herself figuratively and literally, but overall it was the only good trap.

Saw 4 was truly a tragedy in the sense that it had bad Games, bad traps and made zero sense. Fortunately though, Saw 5 and 6 were able to redeem the series in a way.

To be continued…

“Until a person is faced with death, it’s impossible to tell whether they have what it takes to survive.”

John Kramer (Saw 2)