The Saw series is best known for its elaborate death traps. By the time the series was ending its original seven-film run in 2010, Jigsaw’s elaborate mechanisms designed to mutilate and maim people the serial killer deemed worthy of such torment had become as much characters as their victims. Despite Saw X ’s near-universal acclaim in 2023, Lionsgate isn’t reviving the annual death game machine, and Saw XI is coming out in 2025 instead.
But it is still Halloween, so it must be Saw . Let’s run down the best traps in each movie. Spoilers ahead! Most people will point to the iconic Reverse Bear Trap as the original film’s best mechanism of death.
It succinctly captures the essence of the Jigsaw Killer’s whole deal, and it’s no surprise, given that it had also been the basis of the original short film that helped get the movie greenlit. However, it didn’t facilitate one of the best twists in horror film history, which the Bathroom Trap did. Its premise is simple: two people are chained by their ankles across a filthy bathroom, with Doctor Lawrence Gordon told all he has to do to leave the game is kill freelance photographer Adam on the other side.
They’re given no further instruction, so he’s free to do whatever he deems necessary to make it happen in the few hours he’s allowed. The open-endedness of the Bathroom Trap is what makes it so tense. Where most of Jigsaw’s death machines are short affairs that end in a spectacular, gorey fashion, the Bathroom Tr.