The best, most complicated, and most sadistic of Jigsaw’s games.

Photo: Lionsgate Photo: Lionsgate

The Saw series has changed significantly in focus and appearance over ten films since 2004, except for one constant: its innovative torture traps, which usually involve self-mutilation and sometimes even feel narratively justified. The franchise is partially responsible for the birth of the modern “torture porn” genre — the excesses of which the movies eventually embraced — but its mythology is just as extravagant, from its secret apprentices and endless twists to the increasingly elaborate nature of each trap (or “game”), which also, lest we forget, helped popularize escape rooms.

But listing our favorite traps isn’t enough — not when the series has reinvented itself so many times and reflected that evolution in the increasing complexity of each bloodletting device. Instead, we thought it better to employ a peer-reviewed scientific method to determine how well each trap actually works, how it expresses the film’s themes, and how it fits into the larger context of Jigsaw’s grand moralistic vision, wherein he hopes his subjects will hobble away with some sort of lesson, usually a renewed appreciation for life. If those subjects don’t make it? Well, you could argue that Jigsaw often doesn’t actually kill anyone himself — he just finds innovative ways for his victims to kill themselves. It probably won’t hold up in court, but as long as Jigsaw believes it, fine by us.

We’ll be evaluating the concept behind each trap (what is it about, thematically speaking?), its execution (heh), the sadism or difficulty level, and the most all-important measure for any self-professed Saw fan: Can it be hacked? Us Saw fans tend to believe we’re built different, and identifying plot holes in the airtight construction of a franchise built on plot twists and marvels of Rube Goldberg–ian engineering is a point of pride. Is there an alternate solution to the traps that the victims didn’t think of? If there is, we’ll risk Jigsaw’s ire and loudly point it out, awarding it a lower points value. Ten points for each category, with a maximum possible total of 40.

10. Knife Chair (Saw IV)

Saw IV had the unique task of carrying the story forward after its main baddie, John Kramer (a.k.a. Jigsaw), had been definitively killed in Saw III. While the 2007 sequel’s central “game” is a citywide scavenger hunt, one of its most memorable traps occurs in flashback as a way to fill in Jigsaw’s mysterious backstory. While Saw and Saw II offer hints about the sadistic game master’s cancer diagnosis, his vehicular suicide attempt, and his newfound appreciation for life, Saw IV cuts through his delusions of grandeur and reveals that his first-ever trap was motivated by revenge, plain and simple.

Concept: 8/10

The trap’s victim, Cecil, was a junkie who broke into the clinic run by Jigsaw’s pregnant wife, Jill, causing her to have a miscarriage. So Jigsaw straps him to a rickety wooden chair with blades embedded in his wrists and ankles, which he can only escape if he presses his face all the way through a headpiece made of knives, leaving him with permanent scars. “Today, we’re bringing the ugliness inside you out into the open,” Jigsaw declares; it’s a remarkably lucid and poetic objective for a first-time trap designer, showing us that he has (or at least, has deluded himself into believing he has) much more existential motives than mere torture.

Execution: 6/10

While the Knife Chair gets points for simplicity,this is also its downfall. The trap is so flimsy that Cecil ends up breaking free just by wiggling around in pain, causing it to collapse. Still, the scene’s conclusion is funny enough to earn Jigsaw’s debut game a passing grade. As a bleeding, furious Cecil threatens Jigsaw’s life, the psycho opens his arms in a messianic embrace, offering Cecil a chance at renewal and forgiveness. But instead of hugging him, Cecil lunges — at which point Jigsaw simply sidesteps the attack, causing Cecil to tumble into a strategically placed bed of barbed wire, presumably dying there in a way that allows Jigsaw to shrug off any responsibility.

Sadism: 7/10

While Cecil’s initial injuries may not have been life-threatening, the idea of deep and permanent facial scarring is no one’s idea of a good time.

Can it be hacked? 2/10

Cecil could’ve just leaned his head forward and let the knives cut along his scalp instead of his cheeks and forehead. It would’ve still hurt like hell, but it’s the kind of thing you can cover up with a wig or a comb-over.

Total: 23

9. Motor-cylone (Jigsaw)

Jigsaw, the series’ eighth entry and the first of two attempted reboots, sort of contradicts Saw IV by revealing that one of Kramer’s earliest games was actually a ludicrously complex walkthrough. It totally breaks the franchise’s sense of linear escalation, but at least it provides one hell of a kooky trap.

Concept: 7/10

It’s a giant blender. A giant blender! During the sprawling central game, one of a handful of subjects, Mitch, is strung up by his legs and slowly lowered into an enormous, conical funnel made out of a spiral blade. Once again, it’s a trap with vengeance on the brain, because it turns out that Mitch [checks notes] sold Jigsaw’s teenage nephew a motorcycle with faulty brakes, which ended up killing him. So, in order to survive, Mitch must avoid the spinning sawrricane and pull on a bike brake at the bottom of the spiral, while the very same bike he sold Kramer’s nephew powers the device up above.

Execution: 7/10

A contender for the silliest trap in the series, it’s unbelievably complicated even before you factor in the fact that it’s just one of a series of sub-traps in a much larger game that every victim seems to react to with a spit-take. Jigsaw is not a serious movie, even though it means to be — the sudden reveal of a secret dead biker nephew who’s never mentioned before or since is the pièce de résistance. But it yields a game where someone becomes a bike-powered human smoothie, exactly the kind of audacious stupidity worthy of Saw.

Sadism: 8/10

Again, it’s a giant blender.

Can it be hacked? 2/10

Unfortunately, it’s an easy trap to stop (in fact, one of Mitch’s compatriots does manage to sabotage it, albeit temporarily), and the only reason Mitch ends up being turned to pulp is because he inexplicably starts flailing around instead of reaching for the bike brake. Personally, I would have not done that.

Total: 24/40

8. Public Execution (Saw 3D,a.k.a. Saw: The Final Chapter)

There’s an eerie, intimate voyeurism to the traps in the first Saw, which often feature peepholes through which Jigsaw gives himself a front-row seat. But by the seventh entry, that voyeurism has been replaced by public spectacle, exemplified by the movie’s opening trap. Two bros alike in dignity, Brad and Ryan, find themselves strapped to a workshop table inside an abandoned shop window with rotating saw blades at their chest and onlookers all around. Above them is suspended a woman named Dina, who dated them both and played them for fools; just below her, there’s a third circular saw that pivots on a bending arm. Through a show of strength, either of the two men can kill the other and save Dina — but if they choose, they can also work together and keep their saws at bay while ensuring the central one cuts Dina in half.

Concept: 7/10

Where Jigsaw was once concerned with junkies and philanderers, he seems to have now taken an interest in gossip mags, interfering in a love triangle between Abercrombie models. Add in the fact that human guts fly directly at the camera in 3-D, and this trap marks the series’ transition to full-on trash, laced with the misogynistic spectacle of two men (three, if you count Jigsaw) designating a woman too promiscuous to live. Saw was bound to take this leap at some point, and it does so unapologetically.

Execution: 7/10

Saw 3D isn’t really about anything in particular, but the opening sequence offers something close to meta-commentary on how the series’ traps have become about spectacle first and foremost. This would’ve clocked in at a six out of ten, but the involvement of actual saws earns it a bonus point.

Sadism: 7 /10

Getting sawed in half is bad enough. But getting sawed in half in front of curious onlookers pointing camera phones at you as Jigsaw airs your dirty laundry? Embarrassing. (Bonus point for this trap accidentally scarring a bunch of 7-year-olds who thought they were sitting down to watch Megamind at a movie theater in 2010.)

Can it be hacked? 5/10

Brad and Ryan manage to negotiate their way out alive, but what about Dina? The film wants us to think of her as a bimbo, and so she openly and explicitly tries to play both men against each other, which only aids the fellas’ realization that they need to work together. Don’t confess your love for both of them, Dina! Just pick whoever has the bigger pecs and/or biceps, duh.

Total: 26/40

7. Brain Surgery (Saw X)

Like Saw IV, the latest Saw entry has revenge on its mind. It reveals that Jigsaw — the protagonist and ostensible hero of this movie! — was once conned by a group of fake doctors on the outskirts of Mexico City, who promised him a cancer miracle cure. In return, Mateo, who played the anesthesiologist during Kramer’s pantomime brain surgery (these con artists went to extreme lengths to maintain the façade), ends up in a fitting trap with a surgical theme.

Concept: 9/10

Jigsaw is nothing if not a poet, the Rupi Kaur of blood and gore, so if you pretend to be a doctor for financial gain, you can be damn sure he’ll bring things full circle. Strapped against a standing gurney with two halves of a metal mask lined with electric diodes on either side of his face, Mateo is forced to perform brain surgery on himself — without the help of anesthetic, as Jigsaw makes sure to note — and drill a hole in his skull and pull out a chunk of his own gray matter. If he places enough brain tissue inside a beaker in time, an electrical system will release a key with which he can unlock himself. If not, he’s toast: The two sides of the diode contraption (designed like a Tlaloc mask) will close and pretty much heat his entire face until it melts, killing him in the process.

Execution: 9/10

The Brain Surgery trap gets points for a lot of complicated nonsense: Mateo’s gray matter needs to be dissolved by enzymes, which in turn sends an electrical signal, visualized by a needle on a dial gauge that inches ever closer toward a cute little sketch of a key. Saw X takes full advantage of Jigsaw’s sense of drama, with each game playing out in full view of the entire group of con men (those that have survived their own games, that is). Mateo is first wheeled out into an enormous open room where his partners are chained up as unwilling spectators. To make matters even goofier, the surgical instruments and an audiotape are presented to him by a Billy doll, Jigsaw’s signature mechanical puppet — did they bring him through customs? — who tricycles his way toward Mateo’s contraption with a tray full of self-mutilation instruments trailing behind him. It’s hilariously unnecessary, and very Jigsaw.

Sadism: 7/10

While Mateo cutting a hole in his head is peak Pain Olympics, Jigsaw’s poetry is his undoing here. The idea of pulling out a small chunk of one’s brain is undoubtedly sickening, but the brain itself feels no pain, so the second step of the process is actually easier and less painful than the first!

Can it be hacked? 4/10

Unfortunately, there’s a pretty clear way to survive this one, and it avoids brain surgery altogether. With enough leeway to saw open your skull, you also have enough room to use your forearms to shield your face and head from the closing mask. Sure, it’ll leave some nasty scars and you may have to wear long sleeves for a while, but it’s better than having your face panini-pressed.

Total: 29/40

6. Torture Rack (Saw III)

Saw III probably has the strongest emotional through-line of any entry: a grieving father, Jeff, is forced to forgive and save those responsible for his son’s fatal accident. But it’s also where the series began to move toward gore for gore’s sake. Granted, the Torture Rack isn’t as pointlessly gratuitous as the movie’s own brain-surgery sequence (to which Saw X’s trap feels like a callback), but it’s still gruesomely vivid, thanks in part to its gut-churning sound.

Concept: 8/10

Forgiveness is a major element of Jeff’s walkthrough game, which makes the act of placing his son’s killer Timothy in a crucifix-like device (with nails through his hands and feet), one of those surprisingly meaningful flourishes the Saw series isn’t exactly known for.The trap’s other half may be a little basic in its construction, but it’s similarly poetic: In order to stop the Rack from twisting Timothy’s limbs (and eventually, his neck), Jeff must retrieve a key from a glass case housing a shotgun — resulting in him taking a bullet for someone he hates.

Execution: 7/10

The Rack itself is magnificently twisted and complex, with gears that rotate like clock faces and remind Jeff that time is running out. But that pesky shotgun enclosure does sap some tension from the scene. By the time Jeff gets to this stage of the game, along with the judge who sentenced Timothy to only six months in prison (Jeff previously rescued him from drowning in rotten pig guts), forgiving Timothy has become something of a foregone conclusion. And so Jeff spends most of the game’s countdown trying to hack the shotgun case, rather than in physical or emotional anguish. It’s also awfully convenient that when he does, the judge is idiotically standing right in front of the gun and accidentally gets killed.

Sadism: 10/10

Our first perfect score. It doesn’t get much more excruciating than limbs being twisted so far around that you can hear (and see!) the bones snap. Worse, the device rotates one limb at a time, so if pain and blood loss don’t kill you, the anticipation surely will. Well, that or your head twisting clean off your shoulders.

Can it be hacked? 5/10

The Torture Rack would rank higher on this list if Jeff didn’t figure out a way to hack his portion of it, though it certainly gets points for making Timothy’s predicament impossible to escape.

Total: 30/40

5. Ten Pints of Sacrifice (Saw V)

In the grand scheme of Saw lore, Saw V is a backstory filler episode. Its central trap, however, is an ingenious change in direction for the series, giving it a more social-justice-oriented bent. The subjects of its enormous walkthrough game are five strangers who learn they were all culpable in a building fire. When the two remaining survivors, Mallick and Brit, reach the game’s final stage, they realize that their compatriots needn’t have died along the way, and their tests could’ve all been completed with teamwork, rather than individualistic survival instinct.

Concept: 8/10

A shocked Mallick and Brit come to this realization thanks to a game that demands a blood sacrifice: a boxlike contraption with circular saws attached to a beaker measuring ten pints, the amount of blood contained in a human body. The task would’ve been much easier to delegate among five different people, at just two pints each, but as the only remaining survivors of the game, Mallick and Brit don’t have that option. They could easily try to overpower one another, or, they could work together through immense suffering to ensure their mutual survival — a surprisingly thoughtful distillation of what community demands.

Execution: 7/10

The game harkens back to Jigsaw’s credo from the original film: “How much blood will you shed to stay alive?” That earns it conceptual points, along with the presence of more circular saws. But most of Saw V’s traps, including this one, also get points deducted because the eventual cause of death in each room is homemade bombs, rather than blood loss, courtesy of rogue Jigsaw apprentice Detective Hoffman.

Sadism: 9/10

Given the amount of blood required, the surviving duo not only have to touch the circular saws, they have to actively push their hands forward, farther and farther until their entire arms are sliced vertically in half. It’s arguably one of the most gruesome games anyone has ever survived, all the more viciously enjoyable thanks to that final shot of Mallick’s hand splitting down the middle, forming almost a “V” shape. Get it? Saw V?

Can it be hacked? 9/10

This one is hard to plot-hole your way out of, since Jigsaw appears to have accounted for every alternate solution. But with 15 minutes on the clock and no bathroom breaks during the preceding game, surely Mallick and Brit could’ve found a way to try and pee into the beaker? Okay, that would’ve only filled it up a couple of pints. Let’s say a pint each, plus another half a pint if they’d tried really hard to spit in the beaker. Still, that cuts down the amount of blood they’d need to sacrifice by around 25 percent. Fine, Jigsaw. A well-earned win. There’s no getting out of this one unscathed.

Total: 33

4. Cat Got Your Tongue (Spiral: From the Book of Saw)

An outlier that features neither Kramer nor his inner circle, Spiral: From the Book of Saw was a botched attempt at rebooting the series with major Hollywood names like Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson. Flaws aside, the movie did arguably nail its traps, which have the grimy simplicity of earlier entries. Plus, a long-overdue first for the series: a trap that targets the human tongue.

Concept: 8/10

The most overtly ACAB Saw film yet kicks off with dirty cop Marv “Boz” Bozwick strung up in a subway tunnel by his tongue, which is bolted to a metal contraption. He’s balanced on a flimsy wooden stool with his hands bound behind his back, resembling a shackled prisoner at the gallows. The trap’s raison d’êtreis articulated right there in the design. Boz lied repeatedly on the witness stand to put innocent people in jail, and cutting out a person’s tongue for such crimes is retributive justice as old as society itself. Instead of being hanged by his neck if he falls, he’ll have his tongue ripped clean from his jaw — and that’s the preferable option. If time runs out, he’ll be crushed to death by an oncoming train!

Execution: 8/10

This trap would’ve scored a nine on the Execution scale, but we docked one point for that underwhelming voice the Spiral killer uses. You can’t replace Tobin Bell’s eerie rasp with a bored subway announcer and expect to be taken seriously.

Sadism: 9/10

Most victims in the series can at least cry out and writhe around a bit, but Boz ends up stuck between a rock and a hard place. Standing still will kill him, but moving around will leave him tongueless. Losing your tongue is the kind of injury we’re all probably anxious about on some instinctive level, and seeing it play out onscreen is pretty gross … and cool.

Can it be hacked? 10/10

The Spiral killer wins this one. Getting out alive means losing your tongue, or at least badly damaging it, and there’s pretty much no way around that.

Total: 35/40

3. Reverse Bear Trap (Saw)

The Reverse Bear Trap is a classic dating back to the Saw concept short that preceded the original feature. Some version of it is used in three different Saw films, and it’s also the trap that led to Kramer finding his first apprentice (or third, if you buy into various convoluted retcons): Amanda, an addict who just survived her game and came away changed.

Concept: 8/10

The Reverse Bear Trap doesn’t meaningfully tie in to Amanda’s backstory, but we’re judging it here based on the function it serves in the first Saw film. It appears as a flashback within a flashback, as Amanda, whose face has been left scarred by her ordeal, recalls waking up with the taste of blood and metal in her mouth and a contraption swallowing her head. As Jigsaw’s puppet avatar explains to her on a TV screen in the flashback, if she doesn’t find the key to unlock the trap in time, it will activate and tear her jaw off, which he demonstrates on an unlucky mannequin. Oh, and that key just so happens to be inside the stomach of her sedated cellmate, whom she needs to cut open if she wants to survive.

Execution: 10/10

It’s classic Jigsaw: a small but ingeniously designed piece of hardware that puts the fear of God in you, forcing you to do something drastic. It’s also a prisoner’s dilemma of sorts; if Amanda had lost her game, Jigsaw would’ve been directly responsible for her death, but since she survives, the only person who ends up dead was the man she killed. As the movie lays this groundwork, it also affords Amanda the line “He helped me,” which introduces the creepy possibility that Jigsaw’s twisted therapy actually works.

Sadism: 9/10

Among the many ways you could have your head exploded, having your jaws pried open seems the least pleasant. Worse yet: While you’d probably die, it may not happen immediately, and a bunch of spiders could crawl down your throat in the meantime.

Can it be hacked? 9/10

At least one person in the room is going to end up dead no matter what, but what stops the Reverse Bear Trap from scoring a perfect ten is that, unfortunately, Hoffman escapes it later in the series. He slips the “jaws” of the trap between a pair of metal window bars just wide enough to stop it from splitting him open like that one terrifying Jar Jar Binks lollipop. It does still leave him with a nasty scar, though.

Total: 36/40

2. The Bathroom (Saw)

Another Jigsaw classic, the Bathroom is one of those liminal spaces that you can’t quite explain. Where is it? What is it? It’s too big to be a private washroom in someone’s home. It has multiple sinks and urinals, but for some reason, it also has a bathtub. The building it’s housed in keeps changing between films, from an industrial factory to a condemned brothel to what seems to be a furnished duplex. In the first film, it’s the premise. In the second, it’s a twist. In the third, it’s actually the set of the Saw parody segment in Scary Movie 4, and it keeps showing up throughout the series. It is, dare we say, iconic.

Concept: 8/10

Two bros, chilling in a bathroom, ten feet apart ’cause they’re chained up. While the idea of shackles and liberation could apply to pretty much any Jigsaw victim, what makes the premise of the first Saw so unique is that the nature of the game keeps revealing itself throughout the movie. Waking up shackled in a disgusting bathroom with a dead body is bad enough, but discovering you can only escape by either killing your cellmate or sawing off your own leg with a rusty hacksaw is a proper worst-case-scenario, and it’s made all the more annoying by the numerous clues and audiotapes hidden all around. (Remember what we said about escape rooms?)

Execution: 10/10

The first Saw movie gives us a rare glimpse at Jigsaw’s process, including a detailed miniature he builds of the bathroom and its two victims, Adam and Dr. Gordon. These aren’t just two randos who’ve committed the grave sins of stalking and cheating, but rather, they’re people whose lives are intimately entwined, unbeknownst to one of them. Adam, a private photographer, was hired to follow Gordon on suspicions that he might be Jigsaw, and the more this information trickles out, the more it complicates the game. Plenty of traps in the series are logistically elaborate, but the Bathroom might be the only one that’s genuinely smart from a cinematic standpoint, in that its unfurling depends entirely on story and character. Jigsaw could’ve had a pretty successful career as a playwright if he weren’t so busy with murder projects.

Sadism: 10/10

Gordon’s realization (“He doesn’t want us to cut through our chains. He wants us to cut through our feet”) is delivered in spine-chilling fashion, as the full scope of the movie’s ambitions comes into view. Making it all the more harrowing, Jigsaw keeps putting hope just within reach before yanking it away. Gordon and Adam think they can get off easy by playing dead? Nope. Turns out the shackles are also shock collars, and Jigsaw can zap them to confirm they’re still breathing. One clue leads them to a hidden cell phone? Too bad it can only receive calls, and only from a man holding Gordon’s family hostage. The Bathroom doesn’t just drive its subjects to violence and self-mutilation. It drives them out of their minds.

Can it be hacked? 10/10

Let’s put it this way. Only one person in the series has ever hacked the simple leg-shackle concept (Detective Matthews in Saw III), and even he had to pummel his own foot with a toilet lid and smash his ankle to a pulp to get loose, effectively losing his leg anyway. Even the hacks for this trap are just as bad as going through with it.

Total: 38/40

1. Shotgun Carousel (Saw VI)

It’s Jigsaw’s Sistine Chapel. His “Rachmaninoff 3.” His Pietà. A beautiful, dark, twisted fantasy of mechanical revenge, transformed into an intensely edited sequence that constantly builds on its violent payoffs and razor-wire intensity. It’s also extremely fucking funny. The best Saw trap in the best Saw movie, it forces ruthless health-insurance CEO William Easton to apply a nightmarish version of his own company policies against his top executives — only this time, he’s brought face-to-face with the consequences of his brutish success, built on turning people into numbers. It’s the rare Saw game in which every victim involved deserves their fate, a formula the series arrived at far later than it should’ve. It’s also the first trap in the series to kill a gay person, a major win for equality.

Concept: 10/10

While a handful of Saw traps feature subtle symbolism, this one is as on the nose as it gets, with six victims — all responsible for denying people’s health-insurance claims based on company policy — strapped to a playground carousel painted with Jigsaw’s signature spiral. They refer to the game’s “rules” as a policy too: “Follow the policy!” they desperately yell, as they spin round and round, slowing down only so that a mechanically mounted shotgun can take aim and execute them one by one. The only way to avoid it is for Easton to press his hand into a tiny, caged contraption that impales his palm with a rusty bolt. The catch? He can only save two of his six employees, forcing them to negotiate for their lives, as Easton is put in the position of deciding, arbitrarily once again, who gets to live and who has to die.

Execution: 10/10

The Shotgun Carousel is about as complicated as it gets (remember, at this point in the series, Jigsaw isn’t around to operate it in person — and yet it unfolds like a flawless marvel of engineering ). But Saw VI, from Saw X director Kevin Greutert, also benefits from Jigsaw’s sense of theatricality. There’s no reason for the game to have a rotating red beacon light overhead, for instance, apart from the sheer carnivalesque drama of it. Then again, this trap is as much a taunt as it is a test. Easton was responsible for denying Kramer potentially life-saving coverage when he was still alive, making this all an enormous middle finger from beyond the grave.

Sadism: 10/10

It’s Russian Roulette, with death by a combination of anxiety and shotgun shell. It forces the victims on the merry-go-round to suffer the same indignity that so many of their clients have: begging for their lives, knowing full well that it’s probably pointless.

Can it be hacked? 10/10

It’s also a Trolley Problem. No matter what Easton does, people are going to die, and he’s going to be responsible to some degree. And no matter what the executives do, they know it’s going to be their turn on the chopping block soon enough. What can you say to convince your boss that you’re a person worthy of basic humanity? In cutthroat corporate America, probably nothing. To top brass, you’re either a dollar, or you’re disposable. It turns out American health insurance is its own rigged game, perhaps the most sadistic one of all — or it was, until Jigsaw had one terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, drove his car off a cliff, and became the ultimate game master himself.

Total: 40/40

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