The franchise revolves around the fictional character of John Kramer, also called the "Jigsaw Killer" or simply "Jigsaw." He was introduced briefly in Saw and developed in more detail in Saw II. Rather than killing his victims outright, Jigsaw traps them in situations that he calls "tests" or "games," to test their will to live through physical or psychological torture. Despite the fact that Kramer was murdered in Saw III, the films continue to focus on the posthumous effects of the Jigsaw Killer and his apprentices by exploring his character via flashbacks.
The film series as a whole has received mixed to negative reviews by critics, but has been a financial success at the box office. While the films are often compared to Hostel and classified as torture porn by the media, the creators of Saw disagree with the term "torture porn". Writer Luke Y. Thompson of OC Weekly argued that unlike Hostel, the Saw films actually have less torture than most in the sense of sadism or masochism, as most "torture" is self-inflicted by the characters (and sometimes inevitable).
Overview
Flashbacks from Saw IV reveal the roots of the series, presenting John Kramer as a successful civil engineer and devoted husband to his wife Jill Tuck, who opened a rehab clinic for drug addicts. Jill lost her unborn baby, Gideon, due to the unwitting actions of a drug addict named Cecil, who fled the scene. Saw VI later showed that another drug addict, Amanda Young, also had an unintentional role in the death of Gideon. John grieved over the loss of his child, and distanced himself from his friends and his wife.
In the comic book Saw: Rebirth, John and Jill eventually drifted apart and divorced. After this turn of events, John found himself trapped by his own complacency, until he was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Extremely bitter over his squandered life, John began observing the lives of others and became even more depressed as he saw those around him squandering the gift of life that he had just been denied. Flashbacks from Saw II show that, after surviving a suicide attempt where he drove his car off a cliff, John was "reborn", and nurtured the idea that the only way for someone to change is for them to change themselves. Then, in Saw IV flashbacks, he designed the first trap and test for Cecil and decided to use the rest of his existence to design more of these "tests" or "games" as a form of "instant rehabilitation" that would change the world, "one person at a time". Kramer was soon given the name "The Jigsaw Killer" (or "Jigsaw"), because he removed a puzzle-piece-shaped chunk of flesh from those who did not escape his traps. Kramer himself stated that this name was given to him by the media, and that the cut piece of flesh was meant to represent that these victims were each missing something - what he called the "survival instinct".
Few of Jigsaw's victims are able to survive his brutal mechanical traps, which are often ironically symbolic representations of the problems in the victim's life and require them to undergo severe physical or psychological torture to escape.
In Saw V, Lieutenant Mark Hoffman's ties with John are revealed in a series of flashbacks during the film. Hoffman's sister is murdered by her boyfriend, Seth Baxter. Seth is arrested; however, a technicality allowed him to be released, and Hoffman, feeling Seth had not served the full capacity of his sentence, kills him in an inescapable trap designed to look like one of Jigsaw's, laying the blame on him. Jigsaw then kidnaps Hoffman and blackmails him into becoming his apprentice in his "rehabilitation" methods, though eventually Hoffman would become a willing apprentice, helping set up Kramer's tests from almost the beginning, starting with Paul’s trap.
The first surviving victim, Amanda Young, views Jigsaw as a hero who ultimately changed her life for the better. Amanda, upon Jigsaw's request, agrees to become his protégée.
In Saw, Jigsaw has chained the man who diagnosed his cancer, Dr. Lawrence Gordon, in a dilapidated industrial washroom with Adam Stanheight, a photographer who has been tailing the doctor due to a former police detective's suspicions that Gordon is Jigsaw. Lawrence has instructions to kill Adam by 6 o'clock, or else his wife and daughter will be killed. Flashbacks show detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, who suspect Lawrence of being Jigsaw, following a trail of clues from other Jigsaw traps. Sing's death from a shotgun trap after saving a victim named Jeff causes Tapp to obsess over catching Jigsaw. Later on, he chases Zep Hindle, who monitors Adam and Lawrence's tests, and gets shot in the chest. Eventually, Lawrence saws his own foot off in order to escape, leaving Adam in the bathroom while Lawrence goes to try to save his family and get help for Adam. It's later seen in Saw 3D that Dr. Gordon found a steaming hot pipe and cauterized his wound, stopping the bleeding and ultimately surviving the trap. Flashbacks from Saw III show that Amanda kidnapped Adam and later returned to suffocate him as an act of "mercy killing"; it would be the first time she deliberately intervened during a test and killed someone.
In Saw: The Video Game, Jigsaw nurses Detective Tapp back to health and places him in an asylum where he has to save six people. This includes Amanda, a CSI named Jennings Foster, Steven Sing's wife Melissa, a reporter named Oswald McGullicuty, an arsonist named Obi Tate, and Jeff the victim who Tapp and Sing saved. Throughout the game, Tapp is followed by a masked figure known as Pighead, who is eventually killed by him. At the end of the game, Tapp can either take the Truth or the Freedom door. The Truth door makes Tapp follow a hooded person who he believes is Jigsaw, this is revealed as Melissa Sing, Steven Sing's wife. She then meets the same end her husband did; a shotgun/door trap. Tapp then becomes insane and is then admitted into an asylum where he lives the rest of his life as if he was still inside one of Jigsaw's traps. The Freedom door; Tapp and the other victims escape with their lives but Tapp becomes fixed upon finding Jigsaw, he then commits suicide due to depression.
Saw II begins with the police tracking a severely weakened Jigsaw to his latest lair. However, another test is in place, as he and Amanda have kidnapped the son of Detective Eric Matthews and trapped him and a group of seven convicts, previously framed by Matthews, in a house that is slowly being filled with sarin gas, with Amanda Young among them. He will trade Daniel Matthews' life for Detective Matthews' time, conversing with him until the game is concluded. Matthews loses his patience and assaults Jigsaw, forcing Jigsaw to take him to the house, only to discover that the video feed from inside the house had been pre-recorded, the events actually taking place much earlier; Matthews' son was locked in a safe in Jigsaw's warehouse, being kept alive with an oxygen tank. Matthews is knocked unconscious by a masked figure and wakes up imprisoned in the bathroom from Saw, which is part of the foundation of the house. Amanda reveals herself to Eric as Jigsaw's protégée before leaving him to die. In a flashback from Saw III, Matthews manages to escape the bathroom by breaking his foot. He confronts and beats Amanda, demanding to know where his son is. Amanda fights him off and leaves him for dead. A flashback from Saw IV shows an unknown figure later dragging Eric to a prison cell, keeping him for a future game.
Saw II: Flesh & Blood revolves around Michael, Tapp's son, who is kidnapped by Pighead II and forced to play Jigsaw's game to find out anything he can about his father's death. Along the way, he discovers a drug cartel that Tapp accidentally stumbled upon. Michael finds and rescues most of the members of the cartel, but they are soon killed by Pighead II. At the beginning of the game, Campbell Iman, who is playing a game to try and find his son, is given a choice to sacrifice himself, a drug-addict who is slowly dying of cancer, and save a "stranger" who has a long life ahead of him, or let the "stranger" die, resulting in his freedom. It is revealed that the "stranger" is Michael. If Campbell chooses to save himself, Michael dies and Jigsaw appears, telling him that his son completed his own test prior to the game. Jigsaw says that all he has to do is walk out the exit. Campbell comes to the conclusion that his son can not live in a world with people like Jigsaw. Campbell attacks Jigsaw, only to be killed by a flying scythe. If Campbell chooses to sacrifice himself and save Michael, Campbell dies and Michael escapes in an elevator. Michael is given a choice to escape and bring his story to the press. If Michael chooses this path, an epilogue then shows that Michael's fame slowly dies away. He is also given a choice to go further. If Michael continues down this path, he is led to a Pighead costume and Jigsaw appears behind him, foreshadowing the possibility that Michael could become Pighead III.
The events of Saw III and IV occur concurrently. Saw III begins with Jigsaw, weakened and near death, confined to a makeshift hospital bed. Amanda has taken over his work, designing traps of her own; however, these traps are inescapable, as Amanda is convinced that Jigsaw's traps have no effect and that people don't change. A kidnapped doctor is forced to keep Jigsaw alive while another test is performed on Jeff, a man obsessed with vengeance against the drunk driver who killed his son. Jigsaw, unwilling to allow "a murderer" to continue his legacy, designs a test for Amanda as well; she ultimately fails, and it results in the deaths of both Jigsaw and Amanda. Saw IV, meanwhile, revolves around tests meant for Officer Rigg, which are overseen by Hoffman. Rigg fails his test, resulting in the death of Eric Matthews. Rigg is left to bleed to death by Hoffman, who later discovers the bodies of Jigsaw and Amanda. When an autopsy is performed on Jigsaw, a cassette tape coated in wax is found in his stomach; the tape informs Hoffman that he is wrong to think that it is all over just because Jigsaw is dead, and he should not expect to go untested.
The events of Saw V show one of Hoffman's first solo tests, five people connected together by different roles in a disastrous fire that killed several others are put into four interconnected tests of teamwork, killing off one person in each trap. The two remaining test subjects realize at the final trap that each previous trap was meant to be completed by each of the five people doing a small part, rather than killing one person per trap. With this, the two work together and barely manage to escape from the series of traps. They are found by Special Agent Erikson and are alive. Meanwhile, Hoffman has set up Peter Strahm to appear to be Jigsaw's accomplice, while Strahm pursues Hoffman and is eventually killed due to the inability to follow Hoffman's rules, leaving Hoffman free to continue Jigsaw's "work".
Saw VI begins with Hoffman setting up a game as per John's instructions left in a box for Jill during Saw V. This game centers around an insurance executive named William Easton who oversees a team responsible for rejecting two-thirds of all insurance claims. As William progresses through four tests, he saves as many people as he can and learns the error of his choice to reject so many policies, which inherently "kill" the rejected. His last test is revealed to be a test of forgiveness by the family of Harold Abbott who William rejected a policy to in the past, who ultimately choose to kill William using Hydrofluoric acid. Meanwhile, Agent Erickson and the previously thought to be dead agent Perez search for Agent Strahm with the assistance of Hoffman. Upon finding irregularities in previous murder scenes, Perez and Erickson discover Hoffman's identity, but are killed by him before they have a chance to report him but Perez tells Hoffman that everyone knows about him. Hoffman then plants Strahm's finger prints on evidence in the room where he killed Erickson and Perez. Hoffman travels back to the site of William's tests in which Jill attacks him to obey John's final request. She leaves Hoffman in a new Reverse-Bear Trap left behind by John where he is able to manipulate the trap and escape wounded. Hoffman is left in the area, screaming, with his face mangled by Jill's trap.
Saw 3D picks up with Jill and Hoffman battling for control of Jigsaw's legacy. As Jill enters protective custody and makes Hoffman's true identity public, Hoffman sets up a new game involving skinheads to find a way to Jill. Meanwhile, Bobby Dagen, a fraud who has written a book about escaping a Jigsaw trap he never had experienced, is captured and forced to confront people around him who knew he lied about being in a trap. Three of Dagen's friends die, and his trap concludes with him being forced to reenact the trap he claimed to have survived before. He fails, which results in the death of his wife. Meanwhile, Hoffman has posed as a corpse and killed several officers to infiltrate the police station. He finds and kills Jill using the reverse beartrap. Hoffman attempts to leave town but is captured by Lawrence Gordon and placed in the bathroom from the first film. Revealing Jigsaw aided Gordon after his trap and Gordon helped with subsequent traps in return, Hoffman is then left shackled in the bathroom to die.
Production elements
"Hello Zepp"
"Hello Zepp" is a piece of incidental music that was originally composed by Charlie Clouser for the first film in the series. In Saw, the implied primary antagonist, named Zep Hindle, is revealed to actually be a victim of the real antagonist, the Jigsaw Killer. (The character's name in the script is spelled 'Zep', whereas the music titles are spelled 'Zepp'). As the series continued, the piece was reused in every film as a leitmotif, often being renamed and remixed to accommodate the changing situations and characters. The music was used in every Saw ending, except for Saw VI where a remixed, slightly modified version of the song was used.
Traps
An important component of each film is the variety of mechanical traps Jigsaw and his apprentices use on their captives to communicate his message. According to David Hackl, all of the traps are real objects, and not CGI. They were designed to look horrific but ultimately be safe for the actors in them. Writer Marcus Dunstan said, "It's built to function there on the day," and added, "It works. So if there's a scalping chair – there really was a chair with working gears to grind and pull your scalp back." The most potentially dangerous item was a "water box," used in Saw V, in which one of the actors (Scott Patterson, as Peter Strahm) had to keep his head submerged as long as possible. Another element of the traps is that Hackl desired a specific look of rust and menace, but he also wanted them to have a type of beauty about them.
Characters
Billy
Billy is a ventriloquist puppet created by John Kramer to communicate with his victims. Billy usually appears on a TV screen when talking to victims, but sometimes appears in person. Billy gives the victims their instructions to get free from their traps before the 60 seconds or minutes expires. Billy has also appeared in every adaption of Saw and sometimes laugh, becoming an icon of the series. Billy was meant for John Kramer's and Jill Tuck's unborn son Gideon.
Jigsaw
John Kramer was a successful engineer, married to Jill Tuck and expecting a son, Gideon. Following the miscarriage of his son caused by Amanda Young and Cecil, John became distraught and later learned he had an aggressive inoperable brain tumor. He attempted suicide but ultimately survived finding a new appreciation for life, realizing how much of his own he had wasted. Using his wealth and skill, John set about testing others' will to live by placing them in deadly traps, hoping to make them too appreciate their lives. Those who failed would have a jigsaw-shaped piece cut from their flesh. This missing piece was used to coin his nickname, "Jigsaw" or "The Jigsaw Killer". John, on his death bed, was killed by one of his surviving victims in Saw III.
Mark Hoffman
Mark Hoffman is a detective who used his knowledge of the Jigsaw crimes to murder the man who killed his sister while placing the blame on Jigsaw. In Saw IV he becomes a participant in Daniel Rigg's test before revealing himself as one of Jigsaw's apprentices by freeing himself from his trap. Hoffman held the legacy to the Jigsaw killings and continued to operate 'games' set out by Jigsaw before his death. Despite framing Peter Strahm for his crimes, Hoffman is discovered to be the last Jigsaw killer, forcing him to kill everyone who knows. While watching the end of his current game, he is assaulted and placed in a trap by Jill Tuck and left to die, but using a screw driver, and a barred window, Hoffman rips the machine from his face, leaving one cheek ripped open, and is shown screaming at the end of the movie. He manages to escape in the next film and hunts down Jill whilst dealing with the police who are closing in on him. After managing to kill Jill with the reverse bear trap and kills most of the detectives hunting him he tries to escape town after being found out. He is attacked by three Pigheads (one of which being Dr. Gordon) and locked by Gordon inside the bathroom from the first film and left inside to die.
According to producers Oren Koules and Mark Burg, Hoffman was named after late Saw producer Gregg Hoffman, who died shortly after the announcement of Saw III.
Amanda Young
Amanda was one of Jigsaw's earliest targets who managed to survive her 'game'. Believing she had changed from her self-harming ways, Jigsaw recruited her as his apprentice. Intended to carry on his legacy, she became disillusioned with Jigsaw's philosophy and began to design inescapable traps intended to kill the victim even if they passed their test. She was ultimately killed by Jeff Denlon after he witnessed her shooting his wife, Lynn Denlon. She was seen in multiple flashbacks in Saw IV-Saw VI.
Jill Tuck
Jill Tuck is John Kramer's ex-wife who divorced him after he became increasingly distant and cold following the miscarriage of their son, accidentally caused by Cecil Adams, with Amanda being with Cecil at the time. She was initially suspected of having aided the Jigsaw Killer or in fact being the killer. After John's death, Jill visits his lawyer to hear his final will, during which she is bequeathed a box containing his last intended games and victims including one that Jill needed to test herself. Submitting to his final wishes, Jill placed Mark Hoffman in a seemingly unwinnable game before leaving the scene.
In Saw 3D, Jill is on the run from Hoffman after she witnesses him escaping the Reverse-Bear Trap 2.0. She visits the local police precinct and demands full immunity and protection because she can implicate Hoffman as the new Jigsaw apprentice. As she leaves the police station, she is ambushed by an assailant in a pig mask and chained to a railway in front of a bladed cart. Hoffman sets the cart in motion and kills her; however, she wakes up in her apartment, having only dreamed of her own death. She is taken to a safe house, but after a DVD containing a threat from Hoffman is delivered here, she is moved to a holding cell in the police station. Hoffman infiltrates the station and kills every officer in his way before reaching the cell, where Jill stabs him in the neck with a pen and tries to get away. He quickly subdues her and straps her into a chair, placing the original Reverse Bear Trap on her head and leaving her no way to remove it or escape. As he leaves, the timer runs out and the device rips Jill's head open.
David Tapp
David Tapp was a detective assigned to investigate early Jigsaw crimes. Evidence led him to suspect Dr. Lawrence Gordon of being Jigsaw and led him to a possible hideout for Jigsaw. Tapp and his partner Sing found the real Jigsaw and attempted to arrest him but were stopped when the killer activated a nearby trap, threatening the life of the man trapped within it. Sing rushed to help the victim while Tapp attempted to arrest Jigsaw but Jigsaw retaliated by slicing open Tapp's throat. As they pursued Jigsaw, Sing was killed in a booby-trap for which Tapp blamed himself. His son Michael, a reporter, abused their strained relationship during this time to steal information on the Jigsaw case and write an expose that tarnished Tapp's reputation leading to him being dismissed from the force. Still convinced that Gordon was Jigsaw, Tapp investigated him privately, inadvertently coming into conflict with Zep Hindle who was holding Gordon's family hostage. Tapp gave chase and fought with Zep but was shot and left for dead. In Saw: The Video Game, it is shown that Tapp was nursed back to health by Jigsaw and placed in a series of traps in an asylum, forced to overcome tests and other victims sent to kill him. In the game's "Freedom" ending, Tapp manages to escape the asylum but commits suicide sometime afterwards by shooting himself in the head in his apartment because he could not overcome his obsession with Jigsaw. In Saw V, Tapp is given a police memorial. Tapp's son Michael is tested in the second video game. Even though Michael ruined his father's life in order to advance his own career, David still cared for his son.
Pighead
Pighead was a masked person who worked for Jigsaw. He appeared in Saw: The Video Game and watched over Detective Tapp's game. He is shown to be hostile and is witnessed by Detective Tapp killing several test subjects around Whitehurst Asylum. Pighead seems to taunt Detective Tapp throughout the game, and sometimes attempts to come after him. Later on near the end of the game, Detective Tapp was required to fight Pighead, who wanted to kill Tapp and sabotage his game in order to surpass Jigsaw. Tapp managed to kill Pighead and get hold of a key to the library where his final choice is awaiting. Jigsaw labels Tapp a "murderer" for killing his servant. Pighead wears a red boxer robe and the infamous pig mask concealing his identity. He is referenced in one of David Tapp's audio tapes in Saw II: Flesh and Blood, with Tapp feeling guilt having killed him, not knowing if the person in the costume had a family or was another victim forced to obey Jigsaw.
Pighead II
Pighead II is a character in the Saw II video game, an apparent replacement for the Pighead who died during the events of the first game. Little is known about the character except that he is garbed in similar attire to the original Pighead and that he is involved in placing some individuals into their respective traps, including Carla. Throughout the game, he can be seen kidnapping Michael and killing other victims. He later corners and murders Henry Jacobs. Before her death, Sarah Blalok indicated that Michael Tapp knew the man behind the pig mask and that he was a friend of his father's. However, she was killed before she could reveal his identity. Although Pighead appears to work for Jigsaw, he commits acts of murder against his philosophy.
