What’s the best order to watch the Saw films? Where does Saw X land on the timeline? Which Saw movies feature Jigsaw? Our Saw explainer covers all the lore.
A version of this essay on the convoluted lore of Saw was originally published in 2021, to coincide with Spiral’s release. It has been updated throughout for the release of 2023’s Saw X.
The Saw franchise is the Fast and Furious of torture-porn movies. These films are dedicated both to doubling down on the conceit of James Wan’s original 2004 movie Saw, and to constantly expanding the series’ lore through overindulgent but sincerely applied flashbacks. After two attempted soft reboots — 2017’s Jigsaw and 2021’s Spiral: From the Book of Saw — the 10th entry, Saw X, leans further into the series’ fill-in-the-blanks structure. Its in-between-quel story takes place entirely in the past, further complicating the deep and winding lore that’s really the best thing about this series.
Saw’s central villain, Jigsaw, has actually been dead since Saw III in 2006. But the producers might have buyer’s remorse over that decision, given how he’s proved to be as much of a draw for fans as the ridiculous traps that define the Saw movies. Saw X takes advantage of his popularity by jumping back in time for a story set between the second and third Saw films. While numerous copycats and apprentices spring up later in the movies’ complicated continuity, the specter of the original Jigsaw killer, John Kramer (Tobin Bell), has loomed so large that he’s shown up in almost every entry, and was secretly responsible for practically every new grisly puzzle-murder for five whole films after his demise.
The Saw films can be neatly divided into four distinct eras, but they all share similar traits. By now, fans of the series expect three big things: elaborate traps resulting in self-mutilation, extended flashbacks to fill narrative gaps, and a major plot twist or three, scored to Charlie Clouser’s thrilling composition “Hello Zepp.” (Which would be remembered as fondly as any John Williams theme, if the Saw films were better or more accessible to a general audience.)
Being a fan of these films means understanding they have a limited audience, but the fans who are ride-or-die for Jigsaw and his apprentices can at least bond over speculation about which minor character will be the next to don a pig mask and a black hooded robe in order to kidnap people and turn their minor slights into elaborate torture games that make them appreciate being alive.
With every new Jigsaw killer comes not only the possibility of unexpectedly enormous traps, but the possibility of tenuous flashbacks to prior films. The connecting of dots that no one knew existed is what separates Saw from most horror sagas: The franchise’s winding, looping lore has become its central facet. Each new revelation is aimed at lengthening the series’ shelf life, but each one also comes with a host of meticulous in-world reasons for more sequels, each with their own ripple effects for multiple films.
And so, in true Saw fashion, we’re taking a trip down memory lane to see how all the pieces fit together, how the series evolved in scale and style, and how Jigsaw’s eight (yes, eight) serial-killer successors came to be. [Ed. note: General spoilers ahead for the Saw movies.]The Jigsaw Era: Saw, Saw II, Saw III
The first Saw, released in 2004, was directed by Aquaman helmer James Wan, and it stars the film’s co-writer, Leigh Whannell, who went on to direct Upgrade and The Invisible Man. Of all the franchise’s films, Saw has the most finesse: The series’ “torture porn” label doesn’t apply, since much of its gruesome imagery is implicit. It’s also the most intimate Saw film, with a relatively simple concept: two strangers with mysterious connections, Adam (Whannell) and Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes), wake up with their legs shackled to opposite ends of an industrial washroom with a corpse in the middle and numerous clues hidden all around, including an audio tape that tells them, in a deep, distorted voice: “I want to play a game.” Before long, they realize the only way to escape is by using a pair of hacksaws, not to cut through their chains, but to cut through their ankles. The film’s tagline could not be more apt: “How much blood will you shed to stay alive?”
The first Saw is based, in part, on Wan and Whannell’s 2003 short of the same name, which is eventually folded into one of the feature-length version’s many flashbacks. The backstory lets Dr. Gordon explain the Jigsaw conceit to Adam, and to the audience. “Technically speaking, he’s not really a murderer,” Gordon says. “He never killed anyone. He finds ways for his victims to kill themselves.”
The production design is consistent across most of the series; its visual continuity is as important as its lore. The locations often feel dirty and dangerous, almost infected, which makes the self-mutilation all the more discomforting. The films operate in the shadow of Vincenzo Natali’s 1997 indie Cube, an existential sci-fi horror film about deadly industrial escape rooms, and Adrian Lyne’s 1990 feature Jacob’s Ladder, whose demonic head-shakes were borrowed for Saw’s fast-forwarded secondary traps. The series also takes music and design cues from early 2000s nü-metal. The band Taproot in particular feels like an overt influence; Its music video for “Poem” mirrors the series’ decomposed look, while the video for “Time,” with its literal writing on the wall, seems to have influenced a trap in the first film.
The first Saw is great at building tension, and its final twist is genuinely unsettling: the voyeuristic Jigsaw, revealed to be one of Gordon’s cancer patients, is posing as the corpse in the bathroom the whole time. While some of Saw’s tropes and flourishes re-appear in later entries, though, Saw II is the entry that really sets the franchise’s template, from its sickly green tinge to numerous twists that are mirrored in the rest of the series, to varying degrees of success.
Based on a standalone script by Saw II-IV and Spiral director Darren Lynn Bousman, with some polishing by Wan and Whannell to fold it into Saw continuity, Saw II ups the ante from an escape room to an entire escape house, with criminals wandering from room to room and playing elaborate survival games. Elsewhere, dirty cop Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) is forced to listen to Jigsaw espouse his philosophy, as footage from the house-of-horrors plays out on security screens. (Matthews’ teenage son is one of the participants.) However, it turns out the video was pre-taped, and all Matthews needed to do to get his son back was sit tight and listen to Jigsaw ramble, instead of torturing the decrepit old serial killer until he reveals the location of the house, sending Matthews to his doom. It’s the first of the series’ timeline twists, and the only one that really works.
“Your son is in a safe place,” Jigsaw assures Matthews numerous times — before his son is revealed to be in a literal safe, right next to where they’re sitting. It’s the first of many dreaded doublespeak twists throughout the franchise, where Jigsaw outsmarts his victims with words. The film also establishes the most important twist of all: the apprentice twist, when it turns out that one of the game’s repeat victims, Amanda (Shawnee Smith), a minor character from Saw, was so spiritually transformed by her first ordeal that she became a Jigsaw devotee.
