Spooptoberfest 2020: My Top 10 SAW Traps: #4

🎶It’s the most wonderful time of the year.🎶

Welcome to Spooptoberfest 2020, a month-long celebration of all things horror. This year, we’re taking a look at my all-time favorite horror franchise: SAW. I know what you’re thinking, “Are you serious? Why?” and obviously there is nothing I can say to fully express why I love this franchise so much, I had such a hard time choosing the order for this list, but I hope to give some insight this year. And yes, I am beyond hyped for Spiral.

With SAW, I want to take every trap from all 9 movies and list my top 10. This is my personal opinion and I am basing my choices on the following criteria:

• Design / Aesthetic
• Pain-Level
• Survivability
• Entertainment Value

Now with some of these, I need to be careful, because if you’re like me and very knowledgeable in SAW lore, then you’ll know that there are many traps that don’t abide by the original rules: a person being tortured and the main player of the game has to free them, two players face each other and one must die for the other to live, and there are traps that are made to kill as opposed to acting as a “tool” to change a person’s life. If I include any traps that fall into either or both of those categories, I will make special note of that.

Without any further adieu, as our lord and savior once said, “Let the game begin”.

 

#4:  The Needle Pit

Film: SAW II

                              It’s not a coincidence that the further along this list we get the order of the movies is from 7 – 1. Entry #4 brings us to SAW II, the film that took the concept of SAW I and took it to a much bigger scale. Instead of just one trap in one room involving two people, we’re in a whole house with eight victims. The trap is filled with eight traps, one for each of the victims and are themed around their flaws. 

Jigsaw’s Explanation: “Hello, Xavier. I want to play a game. The game I want to play is very similar to the one that you’ve been playing as a drug dealer. The game of offering hope to the desperate, for a price. I think we can agree that your situation is desperate. So I offer you hope. The price that you pay is that you must crawl into the same pit of squalor you force your customers into. By entering this room, a timer has been started. When the timer expires, the door in front of you will be locked forever. Only in finding the key before the timer runs out can you unlock and retrieve the antidote inside. I will give you just one hint as to where that key is: it will be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

     

How it works: It’s simple, a key is attached to a needle and the victim has to find said key in a pile of… other needles.
Why I like it: First off, the design is simple and the aesthetic is terrifying. Just imagine all the glass and needles picking at your skin. The pain is incomprehensible. So, as I mentioned above, this trap was designed for a specific member of the group of victims, Xavier. And no, that is not Xavier you see in the photos. What happens is, Xavier shows his true cowardice and forces a different member of the group, Amanda, into the pit to do the task for him. This look into the character of Xavier is nothing compared to the fact that, as we learn through these films, Amanda is a recovering drug addict. She was forced into her first trap for this. The insight into Xavier’s character, the deeper meaning this scene holds for Amanda, not to mention the other secret she’s hiding, and the design/aesthetic of the trap as a whole all help make this trap one of my favorites.