Highlights
- Saw X brings the franchise back to its roots and has received positive reviews, revitalizing the brand once again.
- The traps in the Saw series constantly up the ante in gruesomeness, with some going too far for the audience's comfort.
- From decapitation to brain surgery, the Saw movies continue to deliver horrifying and graphic moments that make viewers wince.
The Saw franchise returned to cinemas recently with the tenth entry in the series. Saw X took the horror series back to its roots, being set somewhere in between the first and second movie. The reviews have been largely positive, and the brand seems to have been revitalized once again.
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The main expectation with every Saw movie is that the traps Jigsaw sets become more gruesome than the previous ones, constantly upping the ante and keeping the audience on their toes. Many characters have faced the wrath of Jigsaw and his co-conspirators spanning nearly twenty years, but some of the ghoulish traps set up by Kramer and his supporters go a step too far in terms of gruesomeness.
10 Subway Trap (Spiral)
Overall, Spiral was pretty low on gruesome traps, with the movie being a massive disappointment when it was released in 2021. However, the opening sequence did feature a particularly nasty set piece that likely stuck in the viewer's minds.
A victim was trapped in a subway tunnel, with their tongue clamped to an apparatus, which forced him to choose between ripping out their tongue or getting torn to pieces by an oncoming train. When his escape attempt failed, the train made short work of him.
9 Decapitation (Saw X)
Saw X was considered tame compared to other entries in the series, choosing to focus more on the story involving the earlier timeline, but that doesn't mean the new sequel didn't have its fair share of grizzly moments.
One trap, in particular, was a stomach-churning one, and it saw Jigsaw design a contraption that would decapitate the victim if they weren't able to cut their leg off and drain the marrow from their bleeding stump in a quick fashion. Not a nice ending for any character.
8 The 10 Pints of Sacrifice (Saw 5)
As the sequels went on, the traps only became more gruesome, and Saw 5 is one of the nastiest in terms of death traps featured in it. This particular trap is aimed at the characters of Malick and Brit and appears toward the end of the movie.
It was known as the 10 Pints of Sacrifice and required its victims to put their arms into a trap that had a rotating saw blade. Once the arms are inside, blood drips down into a beaker, and once full, the door opens to let the unwilling participants escape. It's a choice between both characters to take part and walk away with their lives, albeit severely injured, or sacrifice one unfortunate participant.
7 Brain Surgery (Saw X)
The thought of brain surgery is enough to make anyone feel a bit queasy, but imagine having to perform said operation on one's own brain. This is exactly what Mateo must do to survive in Saw X. He must cut out as much brain matter as possible before the clock runs out. If he doesn't, the surrounding mask will close, crushing him to death.
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The most horrifying and gruesome thing of all about this trap is that the audience sees the brain matter dripping out of his head in an extremely detailed way. It's brutal and is proof that, after all these years, the Saw movies are still able to make viewers wince.
6 The Knife Chair (Saw 4)
Everyone has cut themselves by accident, which is why this next trap cuts particularly deep with Saw 4 audiences, pun intended.
The knife chair is a trap that appears in Saw 4 and involves a recovering drug addict getting punished for his crimes by being strapped onto a chair with blades pointing upwards into his wrists, which causes him to bleed out. It's certainly one of the darker traps depicted in a Saw movie.
5 The Venus Fly Trap Death Mask (Saw 2)
The Venus Fly Trap Death Mask is quite a simple but effective trap. It's a metal trap around the neck, and the victim has a minute to free themselves from it. To make matters worse, the key to opening this trap is located behind the subject's eye.
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This famous trap appears in Saw 2, and the person who tries and fails to get out of it is Detective Michael Marks, who is ironically trying to solve the Jigsaw murders. Some of the traps in the series, as gruesome as they always are, do feel solvable, but this one is near impossible to get out of, and that is why it's so gruesome.
4 The Scalping Machine (Saw 4)
The Scalping Machine is one of the first tests in Saw 4 and is the most gruesome in the whole film by far. It's a chair that is attached to a mechanical axis that moves backward, pulling the victim's hair.
The ultimate outcome desired from this trap is to slowly scalp whoever is sitting in it. The Jigsaw killer invented the trap to punish a pimp called Brenda, who would abuse sex workers to gain power.
3 The Flammable Jelly Trap (Saw)
A man wakes up naked in a dark room surrounded by broken glass and covered in sticky jelly that happens to be extremely flammable. Not a particularly nice thing to wake up to, and it gets progressively worse from there.
Jigsaw tells him there’s a deadly poison running through his veins that could end his life in the blink of an eye, but it's not all doom and gloom as he also informs him that there is a cure for this, but it's locked inside a safe. The victim must find the combination to this safe if he is to survive, but before he can do this, the flammable jelly he is covered in ignites, engulfing him in flames.
2 The Pit of Needles (Saw 2)
The Pit of Needles doesn't sound as bad as some of the traps in the Saw series, but it is so much worse than it sounds. The first sequel and one of the best Saw movies took place in an abandoned house full of traps with nerve gas slowly entering the building.
After many gruesome deaths, the rest of the survivors are offered an alternative to dying if they can search through a dirty vat of contaminated needles to find a key. It's truly horrible, and even if they do survive, Jigsaw has likely laced the needles with something that is bound to affect whoever gets pricked with one, even if they do survive the initial ordeal.
1 The Reverse Bear Trap (Saw)
There are some traps that are used throughout the series with a high success rate. The Reverse Bear Trap was introduced in the first Saw movie, and is, without doubt, the most gruesome death trap of all in one of the scariest movies ever made.
Amanda was the first victim of this brutal trap, which saw her stuck in a head brace from her lower to upper jaw. If she failed to grab the key from the stomach of her cellmate, her face would be torn in two. Amanda is thought to be the first victim to escape from Jigsaw, so the trap wasn't put into action. However, Saw 3D did showcase the aftermath of what happens when the victim is unable to escape this trap, and it wasn't nice at all.