🎶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”.
Honorable Mention: The Lawnmower trap
Film: SAW VII
Okay I lied, SAW VII makes another appearance. This time, we look at a trap that we only get a very brief few seconds to see. And boy oh boy… what a chaotic few seconds. In this scene, we find ourselves at a group therapy session for Jigsaw survivors. We come into the meeting halfway through one woman’s testimony. We cut to a moment mid-game. Let me try to set the scene as best I can. We see two people, a man and the woman who’s story we’re listening to. The two are hanging from a bar covered in spikes, below them are a bunch of running lawnmowers with blade side up, and they are surrounded with…. garden gnomes? This is a real scene by the way. After a few seconds, the woman simply reaches over, slaps the man, and he falls to his death. Afterwards, she explains that she and the man were in a relationship and he was abusive. That’s it. That’s all the context we get.
I include this trap on this list as an honorable mention because, I really wanted more from this scene. What was the entire set-up like? Why was the woman involved if it was the man who was the bad guy? Did they start on a platform and have to reach across to the bar? How did the woman escape after winning? What the fuck is the deal with the gnomes? This trap is so insane, goofy, and over-the-top I really wish we would have seen more of it.
marcus loner 