As a self-proclaimed horror enjoyer, the Saw franchise long lingered as a massive hole in my genre consumption. I’ve done the Halloweens and Fridays, suffered the latter Nightmare sequels, and gave up on Hellraiser, but never touched Saw with a 50-foot rusted pole. The seven original films, inflicted yearly from 2004 to 2010, arrived at a time when I was getting interested in this whole “scary” thing, but still too squeamish to engage with bleeding stumps and busted bodies. That said, the annual advertising barrage of death machines and animal-masked folk in high heels left a scar on my brain evident as any razor blade incision.

It’s sort of a brutalized chicken and broken egg situation: did my younger self compartmentalize these gruesome images in a way which shaped my taste in themes and aesthetics, or did my teen engagement with directly formative bullshit such as Videodrome and Nine Inch Nails open my brain to thinking the concept of Saw is pretty fucking cool? Genuinely, on paper, it kind of whips ass. You tell me there’s a film franchise with punishment games, weird devices, pig heads, and a gay puppet, and I say, “Wow! Those sound like the best movies of all time!”

Unfortunately, they are not. But, they’re pretty damn entertaining.

With a new chapter on the horizon, I figured it was about time to test myself with these deadly games. As it turns out, Saw is one of the most misrepresented franchises I’ve ever encountered. Contemporary reviews blasted the films for over-reliance on violence and under-reliance on plot, but if anything it's the opposite. By the final films, Saw is a black-hole behemoth of narrative nonsense; a true treat for those of us who thrive on tenuous connections to the zone known as “reality.” I’m genuinely shocked by how much I enjoyed the movies, so I’ve made it my mission to share them.

This guide of gore covers the original seven films and Jigsaw, the sequel/soft reboot dropped seven years after Saw 3D. I’ve assessed the movies by four important factors: the “Jigsometer,” which examines how much delicious villain content you’ll be receiving. There’s “Billy Quotient” for whenever the puppet appears, “Coolest Trap” for whichever death machine rocks the most, and finally, “Lesson Learned.” The morals of Saw erode as quickly as its connection to conventional storytelling, but I can’t deny Jigsaw is big on finding positives in your experiences. With any luck, we’ll all learn something, and you’ll decide to sit down with eight brain-pulverizing servings of splattered guts and bizarre lore…...or not. Make your choice and all that.

Saw (2004)

What happens when The Joker traps two guys in a bathroom from Silent Hill? You get Saw, a tight thriller which remains pretty damn fun despite owing its entire existence to David Fincher’s Seven. Derivative as it may be, Saw’s flesh has yet to go cold thanks to solid plotting, solid performances, and solid use of a $20 budget. Plot A finds Adam and Dr. Gordon chained and trapped in a demented escape game; plot B follows mega-dipshit cop David Tapp as he bungles through investigating “The Jigsaw Killer.” Stakes are raised, secrets revealed, blood spilt, and we're treated to a genuinely wonderful twist. Game over.

Really though, the film is a blast. It clips along without a single second wasted, and the narrative remains compelling even if you know the twist. Saw also understands how a film about torture and mental anguish can be fun, a concept completely lost on the immediate sequel. The stylized lighting and industrial music freakout edits work as points of charm - director James Wan knows exactly when it’s time to get goofy. I honestly don’t have much criticism here; there are blips of overwrought acting, and moments where Saw can’t escape the orbit of its low-budget production, but by and large the movie succeeds. Gets a wholehearted recommendation from yours truly.

Jigsometer: Incredible work here. A fantastic sense for the villainous flair of Jigsaw - the red curtains, the swine heads, the perfect sense of dramatic irony; all a great portrait of a man who might be the most theatrical motherfucker alive. I do question his personal sense of style: while Jigsaw’s henchman the Pig looks cool as fuck, the man himself tends to hang around in a $15 Party City “Evil Wizard” robe. I guess you’ve gotta cut some corners when 90% of your money goes to buying Home Depot parts and cassette tapes.

Billy Quotient: There’s no getting around it - the puppet is truly funny as fuck. Every time this homosexual Pinnochio appears on screen is cackle-inducing, and I love every second. The grumbly voice, the bowtie, the haircut, the tricycle, the shit-eating grin; just absolutely wonderful stuff. He’s in this first film a few times, mostly to establish tone and punctuate dramatic moments to great effect. Well, he attempts to punctuate dramatic moments. Again, it cannot be stressed enough: I laugh every single time this shithead shows up. I’m not sorry.

Coolest Trap: The “reverse bear trap” whips ungodly amounts of ass. You make a Venn Diagram, one side “Fucked-Up Masks” and one side “Grotesque Industrial Design;” my fat face emerges from the center and begs for treats. The RBT is gruesome, well-designed, and above all, simple. You fuck up and it splatters your head like a watermelon. That’s the kind of shit I live for.

Lesson Learned: Never say “give me that sweet cancer” while in the room with a cancer patient.

Saw II (2005)

I started writing this article right before I watched Saw; Saw II nearly convinced me it wasn’t worth finishing. With twice the ideas and half the talent of its predecessor, Saw II plays out a depressing escape room scenario populated entirely by the worst performers of Toronto Craigslist. Violent cop/bad dad/Wahlberg sibling Eric Matthews interrogates a cancer-stricken Jigsaw (aka John Kramer); meanwhile failson Daniel Matthews navigates a booby-trapped house with people his dad once arrested. Everyone here’s been poisoned, and they must work through deadly games to retrieve their antidotes. Jigsaw taunts Eric, Eric gets pissed, people in the house beef it one by one, and very few players remain at the end. There are two twists, both of which are cool but don’t really mean much. Game…...over?

The beginning and ending stretches of Saw II are goofy terrible; the middle is terrible terrible. No time is taken to establish the dead meat locked in the house (outside returning survivor Amanda Young), leading to big “who cares” all around when they inevitably bite the dust. Tobin Bell relishes the role of Jigsaw, but no one else behind or in front of the camera seems interested in making Saw II a fun experience. The occasional stylizations and self-indulgences of Wan’s first film are reconstructed here by a director who doesn’t understand how to apply them, leading to lame referential moviemaking which induces eye rolls instead of chills. It’s edgy in all the wrong ways, the plot doesn’t really mean anything, and the killings aren’t interesting enough to compensate. Saw II is a miserable slog, seemingly committed to punishing the audience as much as the characters.

Jigsometer: If you enjoy Hannibal Lecter and The Joker, you’ll love Jigsaw’s appearance in Saw II. He serves no purpose here other than to talk about capital s Society and piss Eric Matthews the fuck off, which again, incredible work. His robe is upgraded, his smug grin is ever-present, and he’s gone through the trouble of some pretty elaborate scheming just to make one guy very mad. This is also our first real note of #Sawlore, when (spoilers!) Saw’s RBT survivor Amanda Young appears as Jigsaw’s apprentice and secret plant within the game. She becomes the Pig and you absolutely love to see it.

Billy Quotient: Billy barely shows up twice here and he looks worse than he did in the first film. A pathetic showing.

Coolest Trap: Saw II is an interesting beast. The traps here are more personalized, but they’ve yet to achieve the Rube Goldberg intricacy displayed in later films. I find them a bit boring - “big oven,” “syringe pit,” and “gun taped to door” don’t really have the same panache as “steampunk muzzle that fucking rips your head open.” I’ll give this one to the film’s cold-open “venus flytrap” death mask - a shameless attempt to clone the reverse bear trap sequence, but one that works for me nonetheless.

Lesson Learned: If a note says not to open a door…...don't open the door.

Saw III (2006)

Oh shit, these movies are good again! While Saw II stumbled on going bigger and better, Saw III chooses to keep things small and ends up better for the decision. No giant houses full of stupid people, and no morose SWAT members making a mess of John Kramer’s pots and pans. Our parallel stories are quite simple, for the last time in the series. The more interesting half finds surgeon Lynn Denlon kidnapped by macabre protege Amanda and forced via shotgun collar to keep a dying Jigsaw alive; the other portion follows an unlikeable schmuck named Jeff while he chooses to save or abandon the people responsible for his son’s death. Choices are made, limbs are broken, there’s a cliffhanger about Jeff’s kidnapped daughter, and we get the first twist in the series that genuinely shook me. Game fucking over!!!

I know a lot of people dig the Saw franchise for its twist endings. The first film’s twist is dampened by knowing anything about the subsequent films, and II’s goes through a lot of maneuvering for an Epic Jigsaw Moment that ultimately doesn’t mean much. III’s twist has a lot going for it - it’s easy to follow, possible to solve from a viewer standpoint, and upends a lot of what you think you know from the previous films. This movie’s grown on me since watching it, because it’s kind of a character study - Jeff’s game isn’t that interesting, but otherwise Saw III is, shockingly, an excellent example of how to flesh out your villains without reducing their threat. Who would’ve thought that leaning into the strongest element of your franchise would make for an enjoyable film? Anyway, there’s also a genuinely tense surgery scene and a bit where Amanda puts the beatdown on someone while decked out in black leather. Good fucking movie.

Jigsometer: Delicious food for all the #Jigheads out there. The majority of Saw III is spent with the ailing John Kramer and the increasingly unstable Amanda, a hot mess who’s far and above my favorite character in these movies. We see their workshop, watch them set up trap rooms like theater techies, and get general insight into their whole “tWiStEd” villain/apprentice situation. Jigsaw drops a few Joker-isms that you'd see screencapped with a black-and-white filter. Amanda snags some fantastic moments and acts weird and horny while fitting Dr. Denlon’s trap collar. It’s great. Don’t @ me about it.

Billy Quotient: Billy shows up about as much as the first film, and brought me incredible joy at every appearance. Maybe it's because I took four months off to recover from Saw II, but it was good to see my favorite shithead doll again.

Coolest Trap: This is where we dip our toes into the most well-known style of Saw trap, which is “extremely grotesque and fairly complex contraption.” There's at least one in this movie that unequivocally sucks ass (didn't need the full nudity!), but otherwise things start getting way more gross and goofy. You could easily name three or four trials here as a “coolest trap,” but my money’s on the “pig vat,” where a man is nearly drowned by blended and liquified hogs. Disgusting, evocative in an edgy way, and really kind of funny. How much dosh was Jigsaw dropping on swine corpses?

Lesson Learned: Bro just calm down, seriously, just like, chill out for a second.

Saw IV (2007)

It’s the last of director Darren Lynn Bousman’s trilogy, and folks, we have liftoff. Saw IV isn't what I'd call “enjoyable” the way Saw III was enjoyable, but it very quickly escapes the orbit of “comprehensible filmmaking” and “good storytelling.” Our prime plot revolves around a gaggle of detectives picking up the now deceased Jigsaw’s trail, and our secondary thread follows a cop caught in one of the killer’s deadly trials. Can he give up his obsession with Jigsaw in order to save lives? Can the detectives close in before time runs out? For the love of god, can anyone grok this film’s ending on a first watch? Plotlines converge, “beloved” characters are squelched, sexual assault is deeply mishandled, and we still don't know what happened to Jeff’s daughter. The last stretch made me cackle, but that’s about it. Game over, I guess.

Saw IV again stumbles in the game department, but lacks a compelling Plot A to fall back on. Trial subject Lt. Rigg appears in the prior two films, but you’d be hard-pressed to remember unless you watched these back to back. The film sets up to frame him as Jigsaw’s apprentice, but it never goes anywhere and the eventual “moral” feels arbitrary at best. No duh that Jigsaw wants cops to stay out of his shit. The investigation plot is a potato salad of police and false leads and Jigsaw’s ex-wife, Jill Tuck. Characters such as detective (spoilers: secretly evil) Hoffman and Agent Strahm will be important later, but they don’t accomplish much here. The best part of IV is how it establishes the type of wackadoo narrative techniques which consume the series going forward: parallel events, nested flashbacks, and a vested interest in being as obtuse as possible for the sake of lore or a twist. Despite my gripes, the final turn of this movie is so bananas it nearly justifies the entire film. Nearly.

Jigsometer: Wonderful #Sawlore here. A+. The Jigsaw content conveyed is a minimum compared to III’s bounty, but what’s present is fantastic. As mentioned, we meet John’s former wife Jill, who flashes back to a hacky comic book Jigsaw origin which is both a retcon of/prequel to the backstory that defined the first three films. She flashes back inside these flashbacks to Jigsaw events she wasn’t present for. John builds the puppet and spends time in his workshop perfecting his fucked-up voice. He appears on magazine covers (?), develops a connection to the Chinese Zodiac (??), and wears a hoodie/backwards baseball cap combo (???). Gloriously dumb stuff.

Billy Quotient: I thought this would be a weak showing for my main man, but the puppet rolls out in force by IV’s conclusion. Much like Jigsaw himself, Billy’s appearances are sparse and powerful. There’s some classic TV screen time, but he also shows up seated amongst candles like an overwrought Grindr date. The crème de la crème is when John gifts his wife a proto-Billy marionette, somehow even gayer and more hysterical than his subsequent iteration. I genuinely can’t believe that these movies were taken seriously.

Coolest Trap: The traps of Saw IV are absolutely nothing to me. I know there's a learning curve when designing fucked-up death machines, but one is bad to see in a bad sense (don’t need the sex crime shit!) and the others have a fright level equivalent to dirty socks. I have to hand it to the “ice block” trap, a mechanism so precise and ostentatious that it requires an engineering PhD both to build and parse as an audience member. It's big, stupid, and delivers the best moment of physical comedy in the series so far. What more can you ask for?

Lesson Learned: Wait, really? It's actually about not opening doors this time? Haha holy shit dude.

Saw V (2008)

Fuck yes!! This is the stupid shit I live for!!! After four films of pretending to be “real movies,” Saw V gives up and collapses under the weight of its own nonsense. This time, our primary narrative follows Agent Strahm as he closes in on secret Jigsaw apprentice Hoffman; the secondary track is five people stuck in a better version of the trap house from II. None of this matters though, because Saw V is an unbelievable 90-minute exposition dump which exists only to retcon bad guy Hoffman into Saw I - III for no reason whatsoever. Jeff’s daughter is finally rescued, a lot of nail bombs go off, Jigsaw wears a velvet tracksuit, and there's a conclusion which lacks a big twist but whips incredible amounts of ass. They don't say it this time, but you know it's game over.

I don't think a summary gives a good idea of the movie, because Saw V is unhinged, self-indulgent filmmaking so far up its own ass it's nigh impossible to tell what's actually happening for about 60% of the runtime. The narrative drifts back in time sporadically with zero indication, flashbacks happen within those flashbacks, and the sheer level of exposition is so titanic that the trap sequences are rendered irrelevant, and exist only to break up the constant influx of lore. The violence and torture are obviously what captured people about this series, but it's super clear the creators only cared about the absolutely wild narrative bullshit at this point. If you're a fan of movies that shatter the laws of conventional cinema with impunity, I promise you’ll get some mileage out of Saw V.

Jigsometer: A pretty low simmer for John Kramer after the barnburner material of III and IV. He appears in flashbacks coaching Hoffman in the ways of evil, and though his segments stretch suspension of disbelief to the breaking point, he doesn't do much we haven't already seen. That said, it's always a pleasure to behold Tobin Bell on-screen, and we get the biggest albeit most unnecessary deposits of #Sawlore thus far. If you've followed these movies you'll find it hilarious; if you haven't this film will feel like it's made by aliens.

Billy Quotient: Again, very slight airtime for Billy here. You cheer when he first pops on-screen and then relish his various videotape appearances and that's about it. To be frank, there's so much happening in this shitshow that by and large you barely notice his absence.

Coolest Trap: The traps in Saw V are less brutal and more forgettable than the prior films, even though I think the main trial is conceptually more interesting than anything since the first movie. This time I'm nodding to the cold open’s “pendulum” trap, a goth-industrial device so deliciously steeped in Edgar Allen Poe bullshit that the film presents it on a dark and stormy night.

Lesson Learned: You can make a movie however you want. Nobody gives a shit.

Saw VI (2009)

I fucking loved this movie. A handful of folks I know cite Saw VI as the best of the franchise, and it’s easy to see why. It’s where all the gears click and start to turn - the traps, the twists, the characters, the bonkers flashbacks and retcons, commentary on the American healthcare system; it’s finally the moment where all the unbelievable elements mix without bubbling over. The main narrative follows Hoffman, fully Jigsawfied, as he evades police and interacts with Jill Tuck - the inheritor of John Kramer’s will. Our game focuses on evil insurance executive William attempting to save his employees from a Hoffman-led trial of Kramer’s design. Hoffman sweats, envelopes are opened, John Kramer looks at fish, and Saw III is retconned for the third time in as many movies. A very girlboss game over.

Saw VI home runs for two important reasons. The first is that it eases off the mondo serious nature of prior installments; the second is that it gives up on selling disposable cops as protagonists and fully focuses on the villains. I don’t know what Saw fans at large think of Hoffman, but I love him. He’s Jigsaw’s mistake: a mastermind who at heart is so bullheaded and malicious he could never carry out Kramer’s work properly. Saw VI is entirely about watching this large adult failson try to maneuver his way out of trouble with brute force, and it’s amazing every time. We get flashbacks of him interacting with Kramer and Amanda for some of the flat-out funniest moments in all eight movies; Amanda rolls Kramer into a scene just so the two of them can roast Hoffman for his shitty trap. Hoffman dumps an unconscious dude on the ground - Kramer idly remarks “that’s a human being” as the camera cuts to this poor guy just face down in the dirt. Incredible! My highest recommendation after the original, but you gotta watch the others for full potency.

Jigsometer: Let’s hear it for the bad guys! John Kramer, Hoffman, Amanda, the ambiguously devious Jill - the gang’s all here in full force. If you’re the kind of person who loves villains hanging out, or say, the henchman material of Venture Bros, you’ll get a lot from this movie. New #Sawlore includes a third origin for Jigsaw, as well as the setup for Saw 3D’s ultimate retcon. Careful viewers might catch it, but let’s just say we’ve yet to behold the best and dumbest of Jigsaw’s unseen apprentices. There’s also the greatest use of Jigsaw’s voice modulator in the whole series - right now you’re feeling legitimately tense because of this scene!

Billy Quotient: I hate to say that Billy is done dirty by these latter films, but…...he’s sort of done dirty by these latter films. At this point the malicious marionette is only in the movies for the purpose of mascot marketing - and that's fine! There’s enough happening here that I’ve got more to latch onto, but I’d love to see him more than twice. One of the appearances is a pretty good bit where he drops down and scares William after a trap, but that’s about it. Nothing to write home about.

Coolest Trap: Man. There are so many options in this movie because all the traps are genuinely good or extremely fucking funny. As much as I love the obscenely stupid game focused on who can hold their breath the longest, and the hysterical, screamed-filled flesh-slicing cold opener, I’ve gotta go with the “shotgun carousel.” It’s a mechanism with a well-deserved degree of iconicism, where William has to choose which of his four employees to blast while they spin around and scream and connive and he sweats and cries. It’s a one-two punch of comedy and genuine tension that finally delivers the wicked, gleeful kineticism I’ve always wanted from these movies. Thank you for the good food Mr. Saw.

Lesson Learned: Capitalism fucking sucks, dude.

Saw 3D, aka Saw: The Final Chapter (2010)

Saw 3D/The Final Chapter concludes with a 12th-hour reappearance from a character the previous five films have been vaguely gesturing at. It's sudden, stupid, senseless, and requires a massive rapid-fire retcon to land. In other words it's amazing, and it's the perfect "ending" to this very silly franchise. Though Saw VI got cartoony at times, 3D is the moment these movies finally, mercifully give up on trying to be torture-with-a-moral edgefilms and embrace their fate as total splatterslasher nonsense. On one hand, we’ve got Hoffman and Jill tussling over Jigsaw’s legacy with the addition of a new disposable detective; on the other we’ve got phony, fame-chasing life-coach Jigsaw “survivor” Bobby being put through his paces for real. Shit happens! People die! You know the drill! By the end, we have several answers and many, many questions - I’m sure they’ll resolve this crazy conclusion in next year’s movie! It’s the phrase so nice they said it twice: game over.

The best part of 3D is that there’s no longer any rhyme or reason to the violence, and it's all extremely fucking funny. A character gets blown to pieces in a hilarious dream sequence, cops are lit up by a machine gun as if we’re in Scarface, and the blood is all Danganronpa hyperpopped pink for some reason? Also, 3D isn't dumb in the ways V and VI were. No more nested flashbacks, no more deep deep lore retcons, and sadly, almost no more Tobin Bell. It's more dumb in the sense that they're just throwing whatever they can against the wall to desperately wrap this shit up and get you to cheer in the theater. It's good and silly and I had fun. At one point they have Hoffman become Michael Myers and just kill his way through an entire police station. Why? Who cares. Just watch the guts fly and eat your popcorn.

Jigsometer: 3D offers the most meager serving of Tobin yet, a real crash after VI’s delirious indulgence. It’s a pretty good bit though: a mocking John Kramer infiltrates one of Bobby’s book signings, decked out in his all-time hoodie/baseball cap combo. Hoffman and Jill go at each other’s throats the whole film, only to end up undercut by John’s “greatest asset.” Who could this mysterious apprentice possibly be? Well…...I won’t say, but maybe you can guess. It’s very dumb and it made me cackle with joy. If you love stupid villain shit, 3D is as good as it gets after VI and III.

Billy Quotient: Pour one out for my boy, ending the original films with a measly two (maybe three?) appearances. I can’t be mad though, because one of them whips ass. As Bobby navigates his trial, there’s a sudden crash and spray of broken glass - Billy swings down and busts through a window in an iron cage like the gothic Kool-Aid Man. Why? Again: who cares. It’s hilarious and cool and we love to see it.

Coolest Trap: Some high highs in this one. 3D smatters around intentional trap comedy to great effect - I wish it hadn’t taken so long! Conceptually, the opening game is very funny. Two cucked dudes are in a buzzsaw room with the woman who dated them both, and the whole thing takes place in a public square like Jigsaw’s gone Criss Angel. The best though is 3D’s intended centerpiece: a four-way car-based slaughterhouse featuring Chester Bennington of Linkin Park. This hilarious “horsepower trap” is the most excessive Saw ever gets, and is well-worth the price of admission. If all the films had traps like this, they would be the greatest franchise ever made.

Lesson Learned: You don’t have to make every movie about a cop. I promise, it’s better that way.

Jigsaw (2017)

If you’re a freak who wants “good production” and “understandable story” from your films, I’ve got a movie for you. Like other contemporary soft horror reboots/late sequels, Jigsaw is engineered to get newcomers and fans alike into the theater opening weekend. The more ridiculous elements have been pared back, the story is pretty self-contained, and the whole affair gets an AMC/HBO prestige TV HD 4K gloss of paint. Gone are the green/blue/orange filters, the jittery music video edits, and the sense that this is made for teens thumbing through their brother’s Nine Inch Nails records. Very serious Plot A tracks a gaggle of (you guessed it!) cops, investigating killings apparently perpetrated by the extremely dead John Kramer. Very serious Plot B follows five murderers, intentional and accidental, as they try to survive a booby-trapped barn instead of a booby-trapped industrial labyrinth. Bucket helmets are worn, references to the dark web are shoehorned (JIGSAWRULES DOT NET!!!), and we get our most strained apprentice reveal yet. It’s the end for now, but it’s never really game over.

I can see why people dig Jigsaw. It winks at the audience in some fun ways, it’s decently constructed, and the final twist compiles some of the best elements from prior films. For me though, it doesn’t really hit. As a 2017 release, Jigsaw dates itself distinctly to the mid/late tens the way Saws I - III date themselves to the early/mid aughts. The major difference is that industrial gothic and blown-out flashbacks and overwrought edge are fun, much more fun to me than slick visual quality and True Detective landscape shots and a narrative where the main character is a troubled veteran who’s Extremely Hero For War Crimes. The Saw franchise is very pro-cop as a whole, but none of the others ever mentioned and then glossed over the fact their protagonist was involved with Fallujah. He’s literally the American Sniper! Wild!! Maybe it’s because I watched these in close proximity, but Jigsaw has already leaked out of my ears. It’s fine! It’s funny, but mostly it’s fine. More entertaining than II or IV, I think, but never really hits the heights of Saw or III or even V. Honestly, I’m probably just brain poisoned by these ridiculous films. I miss Hoffman and Amanda, y’all. I miss them a lot.

Jigsometer: The Bell is back! Tobin’s return performance as Jigsaw is something to be relished, and he kills the role without missing a beat. The #Sawlore is here is light enough to be enjoyed by people who haven't blasted through the previous seven - no mention whatsoever of Hoffman or Jill Tuck or the motley crew, making 3D’s wild cliffhanger even funnier in retrospect. Jigsaw kills a guy for selling his (hilariously deceased) nephew a faulty motorcycle, sends the cops an engraved USB drive, and brings back his very small and very funny nu-metal goatee. There’s some shameless fanservice, namely a Jigsaw collector and their apartment filled with old traps. I get wanting the original saw and reverse bear trap, but like…...the door gun from II? The fucking, plexiglass headcube that filled up with water? You do you, I guess.

Billy Quotient: After seven years, the puppet is relegated to “Cool Reveal of That Thing You Recognize.” Jigsaw puts a little respect on his name (juicing up his first appearance with anticipatory music; extreme close-ups of his trike and fruity lil Wizard of Oz shoes), but like the rest of the film, Billy suffers in the jump to HD. His eyes are now lit red like a motion-detecting Halloween prop, and all his messages occur on crisp flat-screen monitors instead of blown-out CRTs. It doesn’t help that he’s often fully front-facing, giving the impression that Billy is Zooming into these trials from his boyfriend’s apartment. Work from home? More like, kill from home! Yeesh.

Coolest Trap: Jigsaw traps are a classic blend of pretty good, pretty fun, and pretty boring. Most of them retread ground we’ve experienced already, but with a novel twist here and there. I don’t know if it’s the “coolest,” but I have a strong affection for the “grain silo” trap. Two people get in a grain silo, which then fills with…...grain. The trap escalates when Tractor Supply’s bargain bin rains from above. Pitchforks, nails, saw blades, knives…...just whatever Jigsaw could get his hands on, I guess. There’s nothing else to it - that’s the entire trap. Very stupid and very entertaining.

Lesson Learned: Never misrepresent the condition of an item on Craigslist.

All in all? Pretty damn fun! While not the best stupid franchise you could sit down with, and certainly deserving of criticism, it's hard to watch Saw and not glean some entertainment. For god’s sake, there's a bit in here with a huge switch labeled “LIVE” and “DIE!” There's a tabloid magazine with the puppet on it like a paparazzi photo!! Unreal stuff. I always wanna wax poetic about this kind of stupid shit, but I also know it would take me another twenty pages. Boggles my mind that these films slipped out seven years in a row and nobody ever informed me of the 4th-dimensional brain genius level of storytelling at play.

I'm now eagerly awaiting Spiral, but I feel as though the halcyon days of Saw are behind us. Will Chris Rock have a flashback to another character's flashback? Will Samuel L Jackson turn out to have been in the franchise all along? Probably not, but I bet it'll still be real goofy. I'm guessing we’ll get something more Jigsaw than Saw VI, but I'm praying for at least one deep-cut cameo and any amount of mega-dumb lore references. Apologies in advance to my fellow moviegoing #Jigheads, but I will yell out loud in the theater if Hoffman shows up. Fuck, am I a Saw fan now? I think I might be a Saw fan now. Jigsaw made me appreciate my life after all - or at least, appreciate some dumb movies about people getting ripped inside out. Sometimes that's all you need, you know?

Live or Die: Your Guide to SAW