My (Correct) Ranking of Every Saw Movie
So, without further ado…let’s get into it! (Huuuge spoilers ahead. You’ve been warned!)
9. Saw IV (2007)
dir. Darren Lynn Bousman
written by Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan
Daniel Rigg, or: this movie’s only redeeming factor
Saw IV SUCKS! Nothing against Darren Lynn Bousman of Repo!: The Genetic Opera fame—he has directed better Saw films than this—but in practice, it’s an insufferably-boring, transitory movie. I appreciate it for setting up what will be the plot of the next three movies (I love Hoffman! Sue me!), but my God. I promise you I do NOT care about John Kramer’s tragic past enough to give a shit about the flashbacks. The Rigg plot is interesting, but the pacing is SO tedious—it’s like the writers thought the Jeff plot was the best part of Saw III and decided to…basically just do it again. Thankfully with a more charismatic actor, though! The Hoffman reveal is very fun, but has the misfortune of being placed at the very end of the movie, after everyone is already so, so bored. At least Jeff and Eric (probably the two worst protagonists in the entire franchise) fucking die at the end!
Best trap: The Ice Block Trap! This is quintessential Saw goofiness. I love watching Eric’s head squish like a melon.
Worst trap: The Bedroom Trap. My God, is this boring. We know the guy isn’t getting out of it either way. Don’t waste my time!
8. Saw III (2006)
dir. Darren Lynn Bousman
written by Leigh Whannell
Her Dracula slay!
Leigh…what the hell happened here, man? This movie is infuriating. The only explanation I have for how bad this is is that Jeff Denlon was originally supposed to be Lawrence from Saw, which would have ROCKED! Unfortunately, due to Cary Elwes suing Lionsgate, Jeff is what we get, and oh boy: Jeff sucks so, so bad. I really can’t stress this enough. The first bit of it is fun (the interpersonal cop drama! The Angel Trap!) but the moment—like, the actual exact moment—Jeff shows up in his little box, it just tanks. For the rest of the movie, we follow the world’s most indecisive man as he has to decide whether or not to save the people tangentially responsible for his son’s hit-and-run death. Usually, he does decide to save them—but not until the second it’s too late. It sucks. It sucks! You spend the whole movie wishing he would just die already.
The only thing saving it from the absolute bottom of this list is the Amanda/Lynn plot. In the middle of this complete disaster of a movie, Bousman and Whannell grant us a small glimmer of homoeroticism and Jigsquad family drama. It helps that Shawnee Smith and Bahar Soomekh are better actors than…almost anyone else in the franchise. Huge W for women! Smith especially shines—the “FIX ME, MOTHERFUCKER” monologue? Are you kidding me? Starting to think Amanda might be the best character in Saw history (just kidding. I have thought this for a long time).
We do also get some primo John Kramer content. I swear to god, Tobin Bell treats Saw like it's Shakespeare. Watch any interview. It’s fucking awesome. Sawsome, even!
Best trap: The Angel Trap! RIP hot girl Agent Kerry, but this shit is so cool. I just know the effects designers had a blast (no, really, I do. I have watched all the special features on every physical edition of every Saw movie). Nice work, Mandy!
Worst trap: Jeff’s Trial. Specifically the Pig Vat, if I have to choose. Fuck outta here!
7. Saw 3D (2010)
Dir. Kevin Greutert
written by Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan
“I’m sure I speak for everyone here when I say how grateful we are to be a part of yourrr…promotional…deeveedee.” –Cary Elwes, giving the best performance of his life
Kevin Greutert is not a bad Saw director! I love his work on VI, and I truly do believe he did the best he could with this! It’s not his fault (or, honestly, the writers’) that the studio wanted a nostalgia bait movie. And it is bad. Borderline unwatchable, even. That said…(whispers) it’s a little fun.
Think about it! The Bizarre Love Triangle! Hoffman in the bathroom! Bobby Dagen! Jigsaw survivor club! Chester Bennington, for some reason! Apprentice Lawrence! Carey Elwes literally never, ever being in the same room as anyone else! The fact that the only 3D thing in Saw 3D is—you guessed it—a literal saw! I wouldn’t call it a “movie,” per se, but I can’t help but love it.
(In the interest of fairness, I will say: I was very, very high when I watched this).
Best trap: The Bizarre Love Triangle. It’s goofy! It’s clever! It’s completely impractical! Matched only by Saw VI's Shotgun Carousel in terms of victim banter.
Worst trap: The Car Trap, by default. Sorry Chester! It just has nothing to do with literally anything else!
6. Saw II (2005)
dir. Darren Lynn Bousman
written by Leigh Whannell & Darren Lynn Bousman
Some (wrong) people may disagree with me, but Saw II sucks so, so bad. It wasn’t written to be a Saw movie, and it shows. All the traps are stupid (and also not really traps? Like, most of them are rigged, even though John Kramer is still very much alive?). Donnie Whalberg is stupid. This is very clearly just a screenplay Bousman happened to have on hand with a Saw ending slapped on top of it. And don’t get me wrong—the ending rocks! Leigh Whannell wrote it! Amanda kills the movie’s most annoying character with the saw from Saw! But come on. This is just a haunted house. Positives include the aforementioned ending, Amanda’s villain reveal slay, and Crash of Crash and the Boys fame.
Sidenote: The special features of the Saw III DVD include a multiple-choice trivia game about the first three movies that had…I want to say 45 questions? Which my good friend Alyx Kruger and I did beat, after a week-long battle with a very old and unresponsive DVD player. We're really normal.
Best trap: The Venus Flytrap, by default. All the others suck. It gets bonus points for Lawrence having helped with it. It is just a ripoff of the Reverse Bear Trap (a Reverse Reverse Bear Trap? A Bear Trap?), but hey—if it ain’t broke!
Worst trap: I want to say the Hand Trap, because that would be telling the truth (it’s godawful), but out of spite, I’ll say the Needle Pit. It’s stupid! It’s a pit full of needles! And for some reason, every person involved in the production of the Saw franchise LOVES it. I’ll never understand why!
5. Jigsaw (2017)
dir. the Spierig Brothers
written by Josh Stolberg & Peter Goldfinger
I’ll say it: Jigsaw is unfairly maligned! Is it detached from basically everything else in the franchise? Sure! Is it remotely plausible? Fuck no! But God, is it fun. Check out this (gore-free) 4-second clip for a taste of the level of quality the screenplay is operating on:
Best trap: The Grain Silo (pictured above). Stupidest shit I’ve ever seen. They literally grain entrap them and then start dropping, like, knives and saws and pitchforks onto their heads. I don’t even think it killed anyone. Awesome shit. Honorable mention to the Laser Collars, which had me jumping for joy in my living room.
Worst trap: Ummm…I’ll go with the Chain Hangers. It’s not horrible! It’s just a little stupid in a boring way. I get it, though! Character exposition traps are the backbone of the franchise! No hate, no hate.
4. Saw VI (2009)
dir. Kevin Greutert
written by Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan
Who’s feeling helpless now?
FINALLY, some good fucking food. Saw VI holds a special place in my heart—I mean, come on! Leftist Jigsaw! Tell me that doesn’t rock! John Kramer trapping the health insurance agent responsible for his death from beyond the grave is raw. Plus, it has one of the best traps in the franchise (the Shotgun Carousel) and one of the best scenes in the grand Jigsquad soap opera: Hoffman watches as his coworkers finally discover his true Jigsaw identity, matter-of-factly stabs everyone in the room, and burns the police station down on his way out. I’ll say it! He serves cunt! Jill only reverse bear trapped him because he slayed too hard (and he only survived because, well. He slayed too hard). My girl Perez is back to avenge her friend Strahm in this one (WLW/MLM solidarity!), too, which is a big plus. This movie gives me hope for Greutert’s upcoming Saw X. I believe in him! I believe he can save Saw!
Best trap: There are SO many good traps here: the Pound of Flesh trap (Simone! <3), the Breathing Room (the best leftist Saw trap, IMO), the RBT (a classic)...but none of them even hold a candle to my best friend, the Shotgun Carousel. I can’t even believe it fucking exists. Every person trapped gives one of the best purposefully-comedic performances in the franchise, and the design is CRAZY! There’s carnival music playing! I love this shit! SAW!
Worst trap: The Hanging Room. Just feels a little lazy, you know? And against John Kramer’s M.O. (yes, it’s Hoffman setting it up, but those are John’s instructions!) Innocent people getting trapped to teach someone else a lesson just rubs me the wrong way! That’s not true Saw! (The Carousel doesn’t count, of course, because all his interns suck, which is an offense punishable by death)
3. Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
dir. Darren Lynn Bousman
written by Josh Stolberg & Peter Goldfinger
“We look so much like a couple here hahahaha” “A couple of bestiesss”
"'You know, my favorite thing about the movie is, like, it feels like a movie. It feels like a real, like, you know, go-to-the-theater film movie.'
– Harry Styles, on Don’t Worry Darling"
– Me, on Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Oh, Darren came in CLUTCH with this one!!! For starters, it’s gorgeous (and it should be, given its 20 million dollar budget—a number matched only, confoundingly, by Saw 3D). This, more than any other Saw flick, walks and talks like a movie. You could show this to someone as a normal horror movie with zero caveats, and they would understand it! Hell, they might even enjoy it!
They cast real actors this time, too: Chris Rock (of Chris Rock fame), Marisol Nichols (of Veronica’s Mom Riverdale fame), Max Minghella (of Devindra Hardawar Thesocialnetwork fame), and Sam Fucking Jackson (somehow, miraculously). The traps rock, the drama rocks, the twist rocks. I even went in knowing the twist (it was hard not to; as soon as Spiral dropped, Schenk was crowned Tumblr’s evil sexyman of the year), and you know what? It still hit! Zeke and Schenk are the new generation’s Strahm and Hoffman! I hear they’re making a sequel, which I will be sprinting to the theaters to see. Fuck yeah. Fuck yeah. This is the good old-fashioned anti-cop Saw we’ve been craving!
Best trap: Ooh, jeez. Probably the Marionette Trap. Now THAT’S the artistry I like to see in a Saw trap! It’s dramatic! It’s political! It has strong imagery! It leaves me excited to see what happens next!
Worst trap: Either the Finger Trap or the Wax Trap. I’m not sure, honestly. Probably the Wax Trap (like, come on. You can do better than that, Schenk).
2. Saw (2004)
dir. James Wan
written by Leigh Whannell
Bro that's literally Adam
HEAR ME OUT. HEAR ME OUT. HEAR ME OUT. Of COURSE Saw is the best movie in the Saw franchise. Of course it is. It’s one of my favorite movies of all time. But is it the best Saw movie?
…I don’t know! I don’t think so. I go back and forth on this, and today, I’ve gone back.
But enough about that. Let’s talk about how good Saw is! Wan and Whannell made this little movie on nothing but a screenplay and a dream. Cary Elwes somehow gives the best and worst performance of his life simultaneously. Leigh Whannell destroys as my favorite little guy, Adam, who lives closer to my heart than most characters from most things. The cops in this one are fucking awesome (Danny Glover! Paired with Ken Leung, who rocks in this but SUCKS in M. Night Shyamalan’s Old!), we get our first taste of the Reverse Bear Trap (and Shawnee Smith giving us THE best eye acting in cinema), and the (HISTORIC!) twist sets the tone for the entire rest of the franchise. It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s campy, it’s thought-provoking. It’s SAW, baby! To this day, Adam is—and I really mean this—the only person John Kramer ever fixed. It’s not his fault his trap was rigged! Here’s how #adamlives truthers can still win!
Best trap: The Bathroom Trap, obviously. I love this fucking movie. I need it in an IV.
Worst trap: THE FLAMMABLE JELLY TRAP! What was UP with that? I’d expect it from Amanda or maybe Hoffman, but this early in the series, the tension still comes from the fact that anyone could make it out alive. They never even gave that poor guy a chance!
1. Saw V (2008)
dir. David Hackl
written by Patrick Melton & Marcus Dunstan
Strahm! Strahm, wake up! The trap is starting! Oh god he can’t hear me he has his airpods in
God, I love Saw V. The best thing Saw ever did for itself was hire David Hackl, a production designer on II-IV, to direct (his first time ever!). He knows Saw. He loves Saw. And he made, in my opinion, the best (and most Saw) Saw film yet. Potentially the only Saw movie where the cop plot (Strahm and Hoffman’s cat-and-mouse) works as well as the citizen plot (the Fatal Five! Well-designed traps! An actually-interesting group of people!). And it looks amazing! The color pops! I can feel the care that went into this, and it was all totally worth it. Just look at this behind-the-scenes DVD featurette on the Cube Trap, which was the reason I actually watched the Saw movies in the first place:
Like, come on! They’re having fun! I love it!
Best trap: The Cube Trap! I love traps that people actually escape from, and I love that this one was supposed to be rigged. The whole world is a puzzle, baby! (Honorable mention to the Glass Coffin’s homoerotic flair. Best ending to…almost any of these movies, I think. It’s way up there.)
Worst trap: Umm, ok. I’m gonna cheat a little and say the Shotgun Chair, even though it’s from a flashback. It’s just a little rudimentary! Not a knock on the movie, though—it does exactly what it’s supposed to do!
Honorable Mention: Saw 0.5 (2003)
The short film that started it all! Kind of a slay. Watch below:
Honorable Mention: The Scott Tibbs Documentary (2006)
Fuck this guy!
A special feature on the Saw II DVD release. Scott Tibbs, Adam’s “friend” and the lead singer of the band on Daniel Matthews’ shirt, makes a 15-minute documentary about Jigsaw. It’s hard to describe. Amanda shows up! It’s fun! You can find it here: Part 1 / Part 2
And that's it! All 9 Saw movies, ranked in the correct order. If you haven't seen them, give them a shot! They're a ton of fun, and, like...'tis the season! Get festive! You won't regret it! I wouldn't lie to you!
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