Saw: 8 Things About The Movies That Make No Sense

The Saw franchise is quite popular in the world of horror movies, but it is very divisive, as well. While some fans enjoy the movies’ storylines, plot twists, gore, and unique torture traps throughout the Saw franchise, others find them confusing and difficult to understand.

There are disagreements on whether the Jigsaw killer was actually a killer since he technically didn’t kill anyone himself, along with arguments on the sensibility of some of the storylines. Although the Saw franchise is arguably one of the best in the horror genre, there are some things about the movies that are confusing and don’t make sense.

8 Adam’s Game

Of all of Jigsaw’s victims, Adam was arguably given the most unfair treatment. His instructions were to find a way to survive, but he was trapped in the bathroom with Doctor Gordon whose game was to kill him to save his family.

In a way, Adam won his game even though his instructions weren’t very clear, but Jigsaw left him in the bathroom to die and yet saved Doctor Gordon who’d failed his own. Some unconfirmed theories suggest that the key to his chain that fell into the drain was supposed to be tied around his neck, giving him a way to unchain himself. However, in practice, Adam had almost no conceivable way of walking—or crawling—away from Jigsaw’s game.

7 Detective Rigg’s Test

Most of Jigsaw’s victims were chosen because of crimes they’d committed, mistakes they’d made, or poor choices in their lives. Detective Rigg from Saw IV, however, doesn’t really fit this formula. The lesson for his game was to stop trying to save everyone.

Of course, in obsessing over saving people, Rigg neglected other things in his life like his wife, but the punishment doesn’t really fit the crime here. If his lesson was to appreciate his life and wife more, then killing him was a terrible way to teach it.

6 The Collateral Damage

Jigsaw’s philosophy was to put people in situations where they’d learn to appreciate their lives more by fighting to survive. However, that only seemed to apply to the main players and not the others who were part of the games.

Most of those people were stuck in traps waiting for someone else to save them—poeple who often failed. Those people never got a fair chance of survival, which completely goes against the philosophy Jigsaw preached of not killing people who didn’t deserve it. Perhaps the most unfortunate victim of this was Bobby Dagen’s wife in Saw 3D, who was burnt alive because her fraud of a husband failed to save her.

5 The Convoluted Storylines And Timeline

One thing that has both been praised and criticized about the Saw franchise is the convoluted storylines. The plot of the first two movies essentially stood on its own, but, from the third going forward, the storylines were connected in a brilliant yet confusing way.

Keeping up with each plot thread is quite difficult, especially for those who didn’t watch the movies back-to-back, as they rely on a good memory of the events of a previous movie for the next one to make sense. For example, the fact that the game played in Saw IV was actually happening at the same time as that of Saw III.

4 The Whole Of Jigsaw

Although the franchise managed to pull off the plot twist of Saw III and Saw IV happening at the same time, using a similar trick on Jigsaw just made things really confusing. The biggest plot twist in Jigsaw was that two games were being shown—one in the past when John Kramer was still alive, and the other in the present with his apprentice, Logan, orchestrating everything.

The success of the present game on Jigsaw relied heavily on the players perfectly mimicking the behaviors of those from the past game, including making the exact same choices and dying in the same order, which was just too contrived to make sense. The filmmakers were clearly keen on subverting fan expectations, but, given that this was the eighth installment in the franchise, most of the horror movie’s twists were fairly predictable.

3 The Surviving Victims Working For Their Torturer

Jigsaw’s apprentices who helped him with the games and carried on his legacy when he died were mostly players who’d survived his games like Amanda and Doctor Gordon. Amanda had narrowly escaped the reverse bear trap—one of the deadliest traps on Saw—and Doctor Gordon had escaped his chains by sawing his foot off.

After experiencing that kind of torture, it seems odd that the victims would happily work with the person responsible for the most traumatic experience of their lives. Their motivations for doing so aren’t exactly clear either in the movies.

2 Predicting The Character’s Moves

The games and traps in each Saw movie were planned and set up well before the player started playing, with several stages connected to each other. But, for each game to proceed as planned, Jigsaw and his apprentices had to predict the players’ moves perfectly, which seems a little impossible. One of the sinister quotes of the Saw franchise was from Jigsaw in Saw V when he said, “if you’re good at anticipating the human mind, it leaves nothing to chance.” Yet, that still doesn’t explain how they guessed the sequence of events exactly right for every single game.

For example, Strahm’s tape that he found hanging behind the secret door in the secret room suggesting that Jigsaw predicted Saw III and Saw IV playing out exactly right, or in the movie Jigsaw where the entire game relied on the players doing exactly what those from the previous game had done.

1 Jigsaw’s Philosophy

The entire Saw franchise hinged on Jigsaw’s philosophy that people needed to be taught to appreciate life and not take it for granted. This stemmed partly from the fact that he had a terminal disease and had gotten the epiphany after surviving an attempt to take his own life.

In some ways, the message was understandable, but his execution of it was rather flawed. Very few players survived his games, so there was no way for them to learn the lesson he wanted to impart to them. It might have made sense if the players had higher chances for survival, but, between the complicated Saw traps that were impossible to beat without losing a lot of blood or sustaining serious injuries and the very short time they had to escape them, their chances were quite low, to begin with.

About The Author

Tricia Mawire
(172 Articles Published)

Tricia is a List Writer for Screen Rant with a background in creative writing and a love for all things film and TV. She fell in love with reading at the age of 10 after discovering that her favorite movie, Matilda, was based on a novel. That led to her first in-depth analysis of literary work to her mom and anyone who’d listen. If she’s not reading or writing stories with crazy plot twists, she’s bingeing a new series and ranting about character arcs and plot holes. Or she’s eating French fries.

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