Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for the entire Saw franchise, including Spiral: From the Book of Saw.“I want to play a game.” From 2004 to 2021, we’ve watched all kinds of folks get dragged into all kinds of torture traps by all kinds of weirdo puppets for the ostensible purposes of living a better life.
I’m talking, of course, about theSawfranchise. Springing from the brains ofJames WanandLeigh Whannell, the original turned heads with its intensity, its violence, and its humdinger of a twist ending. Lionsgate earned a ton of change on it, churning out more and more films, resulting in one of the more complicated, knotted, and hardcore-fan-centered horror franchises ever — not to mention two attempts at “back to basics” legacy sequels.
In all of these titles, one common element remains: The need for a twist ending sucker punch. EverySawtitle wants to pull the rug out from under you, to reveal something bold, provocative, and shocking before cutting to credits. But when a film is defined by being surprising, the capacity to truly “surprise” can get ham-fisted by expectation — and by, frankly, a lack of “good twist ideas” remaining on the table.
Thus, we’ve examined and ranked every singleSawtwist ending in the nine-film franchise. They might not always make sense and they might start to pull the same move over and over, but goshdarnit do these twists represent a particularly bold storytelling impulse, and goshdarnit are they all “entertaining” in one shape or form. Crank yourself some"Hello Zepp,“and let’s get a-twistin'.
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Saw Vhas, kind of, two twist endings, a micro in-game one and a macro “The Ongoing Adventures of Hoffman, Jigsaw 2.0” one. Unfortunately, by delivering two twists in a row, the film dilutes the impact of both — and the power it thinks it possesses in its macro, “Hello Zepp”-using one is simply not there, as it doesn’t deliver much we didn’t already know.
The self-contained trap B-story involves five people responsible for a fatal house fire fighting their way through a series of gruesome traps, per usual. They get picked off one at a time, with one participant (Carlo Rota) going so far as to spit out “Survival of the fittest” before thwacking the shit out of one of his “opponents.” Unfortunately for him, and the rest of the trapped folks, the way to play this game was not to out-survive each other, but to survive together. As our final two participantsGreg BrykandJulie Benzneatly realize, every single trap was designed for the five to get through by working together. Whoops!
As for our bigger, more serialized plot twist, we know throughout the film that Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) is our new Jigsaw acolyte. So in lieu of another mammoth reveal on that level, the final twist instead comes from Hoffman’s method of dispatching of another detective who’s been onto him, Strahm (Scott Patterson). Strahm smashes Hoffman into what’s clearly some kind of death coffin, thinking he has won. And then he listens to the rest of the tape, wherein Hoffman/Jigsaw reveals that the way to survive wastoget into the coffin. Strahm is now going to die; moreover, Hoffman is going to release a bunch of doctored evidence framing Strahm as the Jigsaw acolyte Hoffman actually is! Then, Strahm gets smushed to death, his blood and guts splattering on top of Hoffman’s smiling safety coffin.
Phew! A lot is going on here, involving a lot of plot moves and manipulations of already known information, rather than sucker-punching us with a great piece of recontextualization or discovery. It’s also hard to track who our protagonist is here — I think it’s Hoffman? — and harder still for the twist to mean anything since it’s a somewhat natural conclusion of the protagonist’s goal.Saw V’s final moments leave its audience in a similarly insulated, safe, and very confusing coffin of nonsense.
8. Saw III
One of the grimmestSawsequels (and that’s saying something!) thuds to a close with one of the grimmest endings I’ve seen in any movie,Sawor not. Unfortunately, like number five,Saw IIIalso runs into a “too much going on at once” problem, muddling any sense of message trying to be conveyed among its pure jolt of nihilism and truly, truly gross violence.
So we’ve got Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) going through a series of traps where he can forgive the people who caused his son’s drunk-driving death or (usually) let them die. And we’ve got Lynn (Bahar Soomekh), a nurse being forced to take care of a dying John Kramer (Tobin Bell), or a shotgun collar operated by Amanda (Shawnee Smith) will obliterate her face. But as it turns out, Jeff and Lynn are actually married! And this whole test was not for Jeff, it was for Amanda, whom John/Jigsaw believes is crafting purposeful death-traps without the chance for redemption. But when Jeff bursts into Lynn, Amanda, and John’s wacky doctor’s office, Amanda is enraged by John’s test and shoots Lynn! And then Jeff shoots Amanda in retaliation! And then John, thinking on the fly, gives Jeff a final test to either forgive him for starting all this commotion, or shoot him and lose the game. Jeff, pretty steamed, shoots John, which triggers the shotgun collar on Lynn’s neck, shooting her!
Nobody learns anything, everybody dies, any sense of meaning is folded in and lost on itself in the very next plot move. Who the heck cares?!
I’ll give 2017’sJigsaw, the first attempt at a “modern, back-to-basics legacy sequel,” this much credit: Its twist is a lot cleaner than many others in the franchise, even if it borrows one of the worst go-to moves from the originalSawfranchiseand stealsa move from another whole-cloth.
Throughout the film, we’ve got our macro, franchise plot-based A-story — Detectives Halloran and Hunt (Callum Keith RennieandClé Bennett) on the hunt for a Jigsaw copycat killer — and our micro, game-based B-story — a bunch of strangers classically moving through a warehouse full of traps that give chances for redemptions of life-wasting sins. The film intercuts between these two stories, throwing corpses from the traps into the laps of the detectives moments after we see them die. But in actuality, the trap we’ve been watching all this time — which included an unexplained revitalization of the long-dead John Kramer himself — happened 10 years before the investigation. The power of film editing fooled us all into thinking they were concurrent. And the first person we saw fail the trap was in fact Logan (Matt Passmore), whom we’ve known in the A-plot as a forensic pathologist on the case of the new Jigsaw. Logan was rescued by John 10 years prior and added to his revolving list of acolytes. And in the final moments, where Logan puts him and Halloran in a laser collar and makes them confess their sins to avoid death, Logan spills all of this to the hot-headed and ultimately corrupt detective, before laser-blasting his head into a nachos supreme platter of gore.
There’s a lot I like about this, from its playing into “punishing for sins” and the neatness of its detective story irony. But: I cannot deny that anySawfranchise twist that involves a timeline-jump retconanda new revelation of a Jigsaw acolyte makes my eyebrow raise in annoyed familiarity. Plus, the “this simultaneously presented thing actually happened in the past” twist is literally the twist ofSaw II. Do something different, twist ending ofJigsaw!
To date,Saw VIremains the most explicitly politicalSawentry — and yes, I’m including the new one ostensibly about police corruption. As such, the micro, game-centered twist punches you with such satisfying irony and dramatic justice that it just about sweeps over the typically nonsensical over-twists regarding the macro-serial plot.
Saw VI’s game sets its sights on the predatory behaviors of the privatized American insurance system, an issue that was relevant in 2009 and has since been definitively resolved. The corporate monster William (Peter Outerbridge) and his crew of assistant corporate monsters are put through ringer after ringer in an apparent revenge job from beyond-the-grave John Kramer, as William’s company originally denied John’s cancer coverage request. As William grits his way through watching his corporate stooges get killed in inventively gory ways, we keep cutting to a woman (Shauna MacDonald) and her son (Devon Bostick) watching the journey through a CRT TV. Through the power of editing and our knowledge of film conventions, we are led to assume this is William’s family hoping he’ll survive…
Nope! When William makes it to these cells, he doesn’t tearfully reunite with these two people, but instead withhis sister, news reporter Pamela (Samantha Lemole) in another cell. These two people are actually the family of a deceased man (George Newbern) who was also denied coverage by William. And in the final step of Jigsaw’s game, this family is given the chance to either forgive William and let him live, or blast his ass with a tank of hydrochloric acid. The son cannot forgive him, and, indeed, blasts his ass with a tank of hydrochloric acid. I’m really into this twist, both on a shock level, aTwilight Zoneirony level, and on a “political statement through blunt horror” level!
The macro twist, however, is kind of a damn mess because of the macro plot’s damn messiness. It involves the lingering suspicion that Hoffman is, indeed, the new Jigsaw acolyte who’s still going. The remaining police force is still kinda onto him — resulting in a brief mini-twist where Hoffman quickly annihilates his colleagues to avoid being found out — but that’s not necessarily what generates the macro twist’s power. Instead, this comes from the re-entry of John’s ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell) into the narrative of this film, and of course, so many films before. It’s revealed Jill had a box of John’s final wishes, and these final wishes involved testing an increasingly madness-undergoing Hoffman, meaning that everything we’ve seen Hoffman do so far has technically been him “failing his test.” It culminates in Jill trapping Hoffman in a reverse bear trap and leaving the room, and just as Hoffman escapes his restraints, the trap tears away his cheek skin.
Phew! I am tired just summarizing that, and it is somehow less clear in the actual film.Saw VI’s macro shenanigans don’t quite nullify the power of its neat lil' game twist, but they certainly try their best.
A rare sight: ASawsequel where both the game-level and franchise-level twists hit hard! How? Probably because they are foundationally intertwined, rather than separated by editorial and screenwriting decisions.
Saw IVcenters on Officer Rigg (Lyriq Bent), a cop originally introduced inSaw IIwho has since become dangerously obsessed with saving victims of Jigsaw. To put his often over-extending, punitive need for justice to the test, our new Jigsaw throws him into a game full of opportunities to absolve himself of his obsession. If he fails, Detectives Hoffman and Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg, also back fromSaw II) will die.
But when Rigg finally gets to Hoffman and Matthews' locations after making his way through a series of particularly grotesque variations on “saving someone versus punishing someone versus letting them save and/or punish themselves,” a revelation is discovered by Matthews. Rigg can’t keep saving people, he needs to let them save themselves. As such, if Rigg doesn’t enter this trap room and simply waits for the timer to go down, these subjects will be able to save themselves. Unfortunately, Rigg’s obsession gets the best of him. He enters the room causing a freaking ice block to smash Matthews' heads into bits and Hoffman to get electrocuted. Rigg has failed; his desire to save has ironically killed. But as he listens to his final tape…
…Hoffman gets the hell up. His voice intertwining with Jigsaw’s, revealing him to be, despite having been physically trapped this entire time, the new Jigsaw acolyte everyone’s been looking for. And he locks Rigg in his trap-tomb forever, going to examine John Kramer’s dead body (revealing that the opening autopsy was, chronologically, theendofthe film; mini-twist!). While casting Hoffman as the Jigsaw acolyte certainly resulted in many of the problems the franchise faced in the future, I cannot deny its efficacy here. A very good set of twists for a surprisingly good late-entry franchise follow-up.
4. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Spiral: From the Book of Sawis, blissfully, unencumbered by needing to spin any of the previous franchise entries' plates. The largely self-contained narrative, some cheeky references to Jigsaw “disciples” notwithstanding, zeroes in on the plight of Detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock), his corrupt police precinct, and the Jigsaw copycat killer targeting them all — especially his father, former police captain Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson). Thus, the twist we’re all waiting for feels a little more organically necessary to the mystery-thriller plot: Who’s the killer?
As it turns out, it’s Zeke’s meek new partner, Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella). I’ll be honest: If you’ve ever seen or read a serial killer mystery before, this twist likely won’t knock your socks off with abject surprise. “The meek sidekick is the killer” is certainly a trope we’ve seen before, and an earlier, ambiguously shot scene, where William is allegedly skinned, doesn’t pass the “this actually happened” test. But I appreciate this twist’s simplicity, its confidence in knowing a “good twist” doesn’t need to focus only on surprise, instead focusing on “what can tell the story the best.”
And once we know William is the killer, I love the way they tell his story, and I love the plot he sets into motion even in the film’s final moments. William has taken the Jigsaw philosophy of “redemption by torture” and applied it to the system of “the police.” This was spurred by the brutal, childhood murder of William’s father by Zeke’s former partner. But Zeke, through and through, was the only “good cop,” even comforting childhood William without him knowing it now. So William proposes a team-up: The two of them will line up bad cops through the new Jigsaw trap ringer until everyone is either reformed or dead.
But ultimately, Zeke cannot get over the love of his father — a love that William looks at with disdain, given Marcus' role in police corruption himself. And even though Zeke follows the instructions of William’s last game, this refusal to move forward has already ensured his failure. The final actions of William reveal that these tests were not for the participants but Zeke himself. William raises Marcus as a human puppet and forces him to raise a gun on his fellow, corrupt policemen. The police shoot him down, Zeke screams at an escaping William, andSpiralends with one of the franchise’s bluntest, simplest, and most satisfying cut to credits.
3. Saw: The Final Chapter
Saw: The Final Chapterisa very stupid movie.Deliriously so. And I kind of low-key/high-key love it.
In a franchise whose late-period twists are defined by a perverse need to rewrite its past and make every character a secret Jigsaw acolyte, the absurd apotheosis of its “final chapter” would be to, of course, make OG game-player Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) the OG Jigsaw acolyte who is rewritten to be responsible for the entire franchise’s history of traps and plans.
Saw: The Final Chapter, blissfully, does this. It shows us that Dr. Gordon, after sawing his damn foot off, turning ashy white, and crawling out of a room, never to be seen again despite every single person we’ve ever seen once showing up to anchor a key plot point in every otherSawmovie, has been alive this whole time. John Kramer found him, saved him, nursed him to health, and trusted him asthejigsawacolyte above all other Jigsaw acolytes, the true heir to John’s final wishes of fulfilling his legacy. So Dr. Gordon throws on that pig mask, shackles faker acolyte Hoffman to the same damn bathroom chain he was originally chained to, and leaves him to die and walk off into the sunset as our Final Jigsaw.
When this happened, I hooted and hollered like I was watching Justin Verlander pulling off a no-hitter. It’s so audacious, so stupid, sonecessary. I love this twist so much because of how little it cares about the rightful inclination to hate it.
And now, theJigsawtwist done right!
Donnie Wahlberg’s Detective Eric Matthews has cornered John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, in his dumb little trap warehouse. But he can’t make the arrest just yet. Because as Matthews sees on a TV screen, John seems to have trapped Matthews' estranged son (Erik Knudsen) in a new game alongside a crew of vicious criminals who were all arrested, often falsely so, by Matthews himself. If Jigsaw’s traps don’t kill Matthews' son, these people with a vendetta against his dad certainly will! How can Matthews save his son from death? John’s instructions are clear: Just sit down and talk to me.
Matthews tries to, but his temper, his inability to listen, his latent impatience as a human prevents him (plus, like, he’s watching his son deal with a haunted funhouse of traps and murderers). He tries a bunch of loopholes to find the housewhiletalking to John, but they come up empty. Finally, Matthews succumbs to beating the ever-loving shit out of John, forcing him to take him to the house. It works… for a moment.
As Matthews arrives at the house, his police squad finds out that the video they were watching was not a live recording, but a tape of something that happeneddaysbefore. Right on cue, Matthews' son pops out of a safe next to the interrogation site, secure and snug as a bug in a rug. If Matthews had simply sat his ass down, talked to Mr. Jigsaw, and not given into his particular methods of wasting life, his son would’ve been safeandhe would’ve been able to arrest Mr. Jigsaw.
Instead, a victim of his folly (and our false understanding that “cross-cutting meets concurrence”), Matthews finds himself trapped in a new room, chained to a pipe. And in the series' first-ever “a participant was an acolyte the whole time” twist, Amanda reveals herself as John’s main accomplice. Game over, Matthews, you beautiful victim of sneaky, right-in-front-of-our-faces-the-whole-time irony.
Speaking of “right in front of our faces the whole time!”
God, the feeling of euphoria that rushed through me during the twist ending ofSaw. It’s so simple, so clean, so delirious. It makes the franchise’s need to keep returning to this well understandable; you get such a high from it, you can’t help but need more. It’s one of the more perfect twist endings of all time, I would dare say; a twist that somehow makes everything make more sense, yields a ton more questions, and hits you right in that crowd-pleasingly guttural “laugh-shock” reaction.
Basically: The dead guy in the middle of the room was alive the whole time. After Adam (Leigh Whannell) beats the shit out of our certain villain Zepp (Michael Emerson)and Dr. Gordon gets his footless self out of the bathroom, Adam searches Zepp’s pockets to find the key to his chain. Instead… he finds another Jigsaw tape. Zepp wasn’t the cause of this game, he was just another player! And then, John “Jigsaw Killer” Kramer gets his bloody ass off the floor, tells Adam he’s the only winner of the game, shocks him once more for good reason, and vamooses, giving that iconically growled “Game over” for good measure.
Sawkicked its oft-complicated legacy off with about the easiest twist one can think of. To this day, it remains the series' peak ending, a powerful game-shifter of horror-thriller storytelling, a kickstarter of a decade-spanning franchise that has still not figured out how exactly to replicate this simple thrill.
Your turn,Saw X.KEEP READING:Why the First ‘Saw’ Still Works — And What ‘Saw’ Sequels Keep Getting Wrong About It
