Above them hangs the woman who has claimed fidelity to each of them. The film opens with a fairly clever sequence that is sort of enjoyable even in the face of its bold misogyny, with two young men tied up to a trap with a saw in between them. And no matter how many ads you see promising this as the last entry in the franchise, the door is left wide-fucking-open for Jigsaw and his incredibly handy minions to return for another ’round in the impossibly elaborate torture chamber.

“ Saw 3D,” which once carried the subtitle “ The Traps Come Alive,” a tag that seemed to lead in a supernatural element being added to the series, with the bloody booby traps actually becoming anthropomorphic characters (no such luck folks), is just another slice of the “Saw” pie. Oscar Voters Go International For Best Live Action Short Picks New Movies: Release Calendar for February 17, Plus Where to Watch the Latest Films Mostly this involves lots of things that make absolutely no sense and leave everyone involved confused and bewildered.īest Criterion Collection Deals: 'Parasite,' Fellini, Agnès Varda, and MoreĪn Academy Member's Oscar Proposal: Add More Actors Which means that the sequels, instead of using the original conceit as a jumping off point for broad reinventions, have become contraptions in and of themselves: struggling, often painfully, to weave a labyrinthine path back to the core idea of the series. What’s even more amazing is that, two or three sequels in, the series’ big bad (and horror icon) Jigsaw ( Tobin Bell) died.

Instead, the sequels have clung rigidly to the formula established in the original “Saw”– a bunch of puny humans are captured and imprisoned against their will, for sins they have committed in everyday life, and rigged to some kind of elaborate, Rube Goldberg-esque device that’s like a malicious version of the board game Mousetrap. With a guaranteed sequel every year, it could have evolved into a kind of “ South Park” with severed limbs - able to comment and critique, with some regularity, whatever was going on in the culture at the time. With that kind of regularity, you’d think there’d be some looseness to the franchise. “ Saw” is an incredibly successful franchise that has been able to unleash new iterations each and every Halloween since 2004.

Saw 7 full movies