- The Saw franchise is known
for the 21st century mechanical torture devices
devised by its antagonist, John Kramer,
also known as Jigsaw.
The traps have become as important to a Saw movie
as the gadgets are to 007, or I don't know,
like the dinosaurs to Jurassic Park.
In fact, the series has gained a little bit of a reputation
for its masochistic tendencies.
In honor of there being a new Saw movie out,
I've teamed up with fellow masochist, I mean, Saw fan,
Sarah Hawkinson, also known as Possessed by Horror,
to talk about our five favorite Saw traps.
We also ranked the Saw movies,
so stick around to the end of this video
to see how everything stacks up.
(upbeat music)
- For my criteria, how I chose my top five Saw traps,
is number one, survivability.
It has to be survivable.
Any fake-out traps where they actually complete it,
but still die, not gonna choose from those.
Number two, plausibility.
It has to seem realistic,
both physics wise and human body wise.
Can you really die like that?
Can you die that quickly from that?
And finally, number three,
originality and creativity, of course.
I feel like some traps just aren't that creative
or they're used repeatedly, like the reverse bear trap,
or they're just too similar to previous traps used,
so I want all original,
I would never have thought about that.
Okay, starting with my fifth favorite Saw trap of all time,
we have Jeff's trial, specifically the freezer room,
from Saw III.
This technically isn't a trap of the woman in the trap.
It is, of course, relying on Jeff's decision.
And it is technically a test for Jeff himself.
And there's a lot of traps like this
where it kind of relies on other people or another person.
And these typically aren't my favorite
because they do seem a little bit
out of the person's control.
In this trap, Jeff must face the only witness
that saw the hit and run accident that killed his son.
And of course, he must decide if he will choose to save her.
The technicality of this trap,
he must reach behind cooling pipes
in order to retrieve a key that will unlock the lock
that is holding her up.
And this requires him to push his face onto the pipes,
ultimately ripping flesh off.
And he has a limited time to do this
because, of course, in the freezer room,
she is strung up naked and water is being blasted onto her
and kind of creating a Popsicle effect.
Of course, this is one of my favorite Saw traps.
It's been one of my favorite traps
pretty much ever since I saw Saw III.
However, it's fifth on this list
because although technically,
he had a chance to save the woman,
he still needed that key to enter the next room.
The only iffy criteria
that this kind of doesn't really meet is the plausibility.
We don't know how long she was hanging there
before Jeff entered the room.
And I don't know if she'd necessarily
become a human Popsicle that quickly.
Maybe time had passed, I don't know.
We don't know.
We also don't know how cold the room is.
Maybe it's really, really cold
and she would become a Popsicle.
We don't know.
But that's the only thing that I could fault this trap for
is a little bit of the plausibility.
- [Jigsaw] Can you find it within you to save another?
- I came up with five factors to judge the traps on.
Is it fair and winnable?
Could it effectively transform a bad person?
Does the punishment fit the crime?
Does it look cool?
And is it brutal?
My honorable mention is gonna go
to the neck tie trap from Saw V.
I like that there's a puzzle element
that the characters have to figure out,
and I also like that there's a social aspect,
but it doesn't really do that well
in any of my five factors,
so I'm gonna have to count that one out.
My number five is going to be the angel trap from Saw III.
In this trap, Detective Allison Kerry is tested
because Jigsaw believes that she spends too much time
piecing together the final moments of the dead
and that this has made her dead on the inside.
This near-death experience
is supposed to make her appreciate life again.
The device is hooked into her ribcage
and the only way she can escape is by retrieving the key
from inside of a vat of acid.
And she has just 60 seconds to do so.
Once time expires, the brackets pull her ribcage apart
if she's unable to unhook herself from the device.
This is a trap that should be fair on paper,
only the apprentice responsible for setting it up,
Amanda, rigged it by putting the wrong key
in the vat of acid because she felt
that Detective Kerry deserved to die.
Kerry doesn't really deserve to be tested
in the first place.
She's only targeted because she's investigating Jigsaw.
But if someone had lost their appreciation for life,
I could see the angel trap being a wake-up call for them.
Does it look cool?
Yes.
Visually, this is probably my favorite trap.
I love the distorted view we see of Allison's face
through the acid beaker
and there's just something beautiful
about the symmetry of the room,
the way the colored light falls on her,
and the pose that the machine puts her in
certainly lives up to the angelic namesake.
This is one of the more brutal traps in the series,
based on an ancient torture device
from Norse mythology called the Blood Eagle.
We actually see it go off on camera.
They don't get fancy and try to hide it
with camera angles and editing.
She just gets destroyed by this thing, and it is messy.
- You.
- All right, in fourth place is pound of flesh.
The two in this trap are Eddie and Simone,
who are money lenders who lent too much money
to people who could not pay it back,
and thus, entered inescapable debt.
The technicalities of this test
are whoever gives the most amount of flesh
within 60 seconds survives and they are fighting
against the clock because during that 60 seconds,
screws are being screwed into the sides of their skull.
I like this test a lot because it doesn't say specifically
how much flesh you have to sacrifice.
It's just whoever sacrifices the most,
and size doesn't necessarily matter.
Obviously, Eddie is a bigger dude and Simone recognizes this
and realizes that she's gonna have to cut off much more
than just fleshy bits in order to win.
What does she do?
Sacrifices entire limbs with bones.
An interesting fact about pound of flesh
is that this is actually a reference
to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.
This refers to a money lender who lends money to his rival
and making the security for the transaction
a pound of flesh if it cannot be paid back.
When the rival defaults on the loan,
the money lender demands the pound of flesh in return.
Another one of my biases towards this trap,
and one of the reasons why it's in my top five,
is because Simone is played by Tanedra Howard,
who actually won a reality competition show for this role.
She was in a show called Scream Queens.
- [Narrator] From Lionsgate and Twisted Pictures,
a breakout role and the next big star
in horror's biggest franchise, Saw.
- Saw will save us.
- And Shawnee Smith, who plays Amanda in the Saw franchise,
is actually the host of this show.
I just really like the connection, and Tanedra,
I feel like, does such an amazing job
and was so well-deserved at this role.
- You want to know the best thing that happened to me
after having to cut off my own arm?
It's handicapped parking at the damn mall.
- Number four.
I'm going more recent for my next trap.
Now, when I first saw the subway trap in Spiral,
I felt like it was something I'd seen before,
but after thinking about it, it's actually pretty original.
The subject is Detective Mark Boswick,
who was tested because he gave false testimonies in court
to get people thrown in jail.
His tongue is clamped to a metal device overhead
and he's standing on a ladder
in the middle of a subway tunnel.
His objective was to get off of the ladder,
and thus ripping out the tongue that was responsible
for all of those damaging lies.
And he had until the next train came through to do so.
In this sense, the punishment really does fit the crime.
We've seen a victim get tested by Jigsaw
for the things they have said in the past.
For example, Nina in Saw seven.
But this is surprisingly the first time
a killer has literally gone after the victim's tongue,
though I have seen it before
in another James Wan property, Dead Silence.
(creepy music)
This trap really doesn't look that cool,
but it is winnable, assuming it's possible
to survive something like that.
And regardless of the outcome, it's very brutal.
(intense tones)
- Next up, I wanted to rank this one higher,
I'm not gonna lie, just because of what it is
and how intense it is, the scalping seat from Saw IV.
Now, this is another layered joint test
with Detective Rigg being tested
while the victim of the trap, Brenda,
is also going through her own test.
The two tests are Detective Rigg is told
not to attempt to save the victim
because that is always in his instincts
and that he is obsessed with saving everyone around him.
This time, he must fight his instincts
and allow Brenda to suffer the trap.
I don't wanna say die because I really don't know
if scalping would really kill you,
which we'll get to plausibility in a minute. (chuckles)
Brenda, who is a criminal pimp forcing young women
to prostitute for her, is attached to a machine,
which is attached to her hair,
which slowly is pulling her hair off, scalping her.
And as the mechanism turns, a code is revealed on the back
and Rigg decides to help her before it's too late.
Around the room were evidence photos
of Brenda that could incriminate her,
so her test was, if a cop comes to save you,
you must kill him before he can arrest you.
Thus, it is in Detective Rigg's best interest
not to help the victim for the first time in his life.
It's a little bit complicated layer tests going on here.
There's very few traps, I would say, in the Saw universe
that have this layered effect.
Obviously, there's joint traps, there's competitive traps,
there's reliant traps, there's group traps,
but very few layer joint traps. (chuckles)
Although I don't technically believe, I mean,
maybe you could die from being scalped.
The head does bleed a lot.
Plausibility is a little iffy on this one,
but I chose it as one of my favorites
and in third place specifically
because it is just one of the most intense traps to watch.
- (screaming) They're in the gears
- What's in the gears?
- The combination.
Get me out!
(intense tones)
(upbeat music)
- Number three.
For my number three I'm taking it back, once again,
to Saw III, which contains one of the most unique traps
in the series, the pig vat.
This trap features Jeff Denlon,
who can't stop mourning for his dead son
and fantasizing about revenge on his killer.
While most Saw traps attempt to transform a victim
through physical suffering,
the pig vat deals in more of an emotional suffering.
Jeff is forced to burn his child's old possessions
in order to obtain a key with the power to free the judge
who let the killer go off easy.
If Jeff is unable to do so in time,
the judge will be drowned in pig guts.
This is one of those rare cases where the test subjects
all survive, but it isn't without a major internal struggle.
It's also effective because the goal is for Jeff
to let go of his past.
And he literally has to do so in order to win.
For Jeff, the punishment definitely fits the crime,
but for the judge, not really.
He just made a mistake and he nearly loses his life over it.
Now, maybe some people will disagree,
but I really love the look of this trap,
particularly because we get to see the maggot-covered pigs
get brought out in a factory line
and dropped into a shredder and liquified
as they fall into the vat.
I love the way the sound design makes this even scarier.
And of course, the metal soundtrack adds to the intensity.
When it comes to the- - Brutality!
- I'm kind of split here.
It's not really that brutal for Jeff at all
because he's only experiencing an emotional pain,
but for the judge, I'd say it's pretty rough.
Not only is he nearly drowned, but just imagine the smell
and taste of getting buried alive in pig guts.
I'd take the corn silo over that any day.
- [Jigsaw] Your soul will never recover.
Now, you have the power
to sentence his soul straight to hell.
- In second place,
we have the infamous needle pit from Saw II.
I think this trap is so famous,
and a lot of people probably think about this trap
when they think about the Saw franchise.
Now, the test is actually for Xavier, but as we know,
Amanda is the one who ends up in the pit.
Xavier picks up Amanda, throws her in the pit,
which just adds to the intensity.
It's not like someone willingly jumped in there.
She is thrown unwillingly into the pit of needles.
And of course, among the needles is a key
that opens a door where there is an antidote
for the nerve gas that is slowly being released
in the house that they're in, trapped in, I should say.
I think this is one of the most ultimate uncomfortable traps
to watch, one of the most intense to watch.
I cringe every single time,
even though I've seen it a million times.
Of course, we know if you don't reach the antidote,
you could die from the nerve gas
being pumped into the house.
And of course, there are many smaller traps
throughout the house that lead
to the antidote to this nerve gas.
Fun fact about this trap is in order to film it,
they had to remove every single needle
from every single syringe
and replace it with a fiber needle, which took several days,
and they had to use over 120,000 syringes.
- [Jigsaw] It will be like finding a needle in a haystack.
- Number two.
The subject of our next trap, like Jeff Denlon,
is faced with more of a psychological torture
than a physical one.
His name is William Easton,
and he's a health insurance executive
for a company called Umbrella Health.
William was responsible for creating the algorithm
to determine who the lowest risk individuals are.
If he determines that they're unlikely to get sick,
he'll offer them coverage.
Jigsaw sees this as William deciding who lives and who dies
and decides to give him a taste of his own medicine
in a trap called the gallows.
William is persuaded to take hold of two chains.
And after a very Dark Knight appearance of Billy the Puppet,
(intense tones)
is presented with two people on barbed wire nooses.
One is his secretary, an older woman
with a history of diabetes and a loving family.
The other is his file clerk, a young healthy man
with no living relatives to mourn his loss.
According to William's algorithm,
the secretary should be denied coverage
and the file clerk should be treated.
But when presented with a choice between two colleagues
he knows personally,
the choice is not quite as easy to make.
The trap takes place in a reptile habitat.
It's symbolic of the cold-blooded nature
of William's decisions.
Is this trap fair or winnable?
That's one of my gripes with it.
Someone has to die here.
You could argue that they're all wrongdoers
for working at a dirty insurance company,
but it's not very fair to the people wearing the nooses
who are really just trying to make a living.
Aside from that, I would anticipate that being faced
with a traumatizing decision like this
would have caused William
to reconsider his policies at the very least.
Visually, it's nothing special.
It's just two people standing there.
And while it's probably a painful way to die,
it's a lot quicker than a lot of the other traps
that put a victim through extended periods of suffering.
It's really just John Kramer's creative method
of turning the tables
that makes the gallows such a memorable trap.
- [Jigsaw] As you can see, the choice is not so clear
when you are face to face with the people
whose blood will stain your hands.
- All right, now for my favorite, favorite Saw trap
of all time, the spike trap,
otherwise known as Cupid's arrows, from Saw IV.
And I feel like this one is a controversial one to put first
because there are many, many more iconic Saw traps,
but I just feel so drawn to this one.
And like I said in my video
where we rank all the Saw movies,
Saw IV has objectively some of the best traps in my opinion.
This trap involves Morgan and Rex, who are a married couple,
and they wake up to realize that they are attached
by arrows or spikes.
And the test is that Morgan finally has the opportunity
to break the ties that bind her to her abusive husband.
The catch is in this, is as she removes each spike
or each arrow from her body, pulls it through,
it will slowly make her husband bleed out.
She is in-penetrated, is that a word,
through many, many points of her body.
However, none of them lethal.
Whereas, her husband is punctured through major arteries.
I just feel like this is such a strong scene to me
because of the emotions attached to this couple,
even though we hardly know them.
It's just something that I feel so drawn to
and to watch the intensity
and the strength and the independence.
I know this is way too deep for just a Saw trap,
but just go with it for a second.
She's finally choosing to break ties with her husband.
Is it really just her survival instinct kicking in?
Probably, but she didn't really have that going for her
when she was with her abusive husband.
And he's pulling on the spikes trying to prevent her
from pulling it out, and it's just a very, very intense
and heartbreaking scene in a way.
It's just, it's my favorite scene or favorite trap by far.
Also, I love the concept of this.
This has to be the most original Saw trap in my opinion.
And I just love it.
- [Jigsaw] The human body is a fascinating organism.
- This probably comes as no surprise.
One of the most iconic, cringe-inducing,
and well-balanced traps in the history
of the Saw franchise comes in Saw II,
and it's called the needle pit.
Amanda is forced to rummage through piles of syringes,
causing many of them to stick into her flesh
as she relives her days as an addict
while desperately searching for her antidote.
We don't know what was in the syringes,
but the assumption is that it's something pretty nasty.
Ultimately, she finds the key,
but Xavier is slightly too late
when it comes to opening the safe
and the whole thing ends up being a loss.
The challenge is actually very doable.
You would just need to have a lot of willpower
to keep pushing through the pile
as more and more needles pin themselves into you.
But theoretically, once you get the antidote,
you'd be able to survive.
Could the needle pit effectively transform its subjects?
We don't actually see the answer
because the intended subject never goes through the trap,
but I think it's somewhat questionable.
Xavier probably already knew that drugs are bad
before he became a dealer, and I'm not really sure
that being in their shoes for two minutes
would cause him to reconsider his career options.
At the very least, it might've made a less evil character
realize how much drugs can mess up a person's life,
but it seems unlikely that it would have any effect.
This trap takes place inside of what appears
to be a nursery inside the house.
When a junkie becomes addicted,
their bodies become dependent on the drugs.
Just as a baby needs its parents to provide for it,
the drug addicts need to keep crawling back
to Xavier to get their fix.
I can say the punishment probably fits the crime on this one
because the amount of needles in the pit
is probably comparable to the amount of drugs
that Xavier has sold in his lifetime.
Jigsaw is essentially forcing him
to go through all of it at once.
Does this trap look cool?
It definitely looks ugly,
but I have to give this one some creativity points
for not just being a big hunk of machinery
like so many other Saw traps are.
The yellow lighting in this room is disgusting,
but I think it accomplishes its goal
to make us feel uncomfortable.
The way the needles stick to her is really well done.
And I know it makes a lot of Saw fans cringe.
In fact, I know there are a lot of people
who can't even do a single needle,
so this trap is truly a trypanophobic's worst nightmare.
Where does this land on the pain scale?
Probably not super high.
At the end of the day,
you're just getting poked all over your body.
You're not getting flesh ripped out of you,
you're not getting burned or drowned,
but I'm still gonna make a case for this
being one of the most unforgiving traps
because this is one of those Jigsaw traps
that forces the participant to harm themselves.
Many of the other traps are out of the player's hands,
whatever happens to them happens.
The thing with the needle pits,
and a few other traps in the series,
is that you have to put yourself in pain to succeed,
which goes against what your brain wants you to do.
You can see in her reaction
how getting stabbed in dozens of places like that
really causes the pain to stack up.
And for Amanda specifically, it's much harder
because she has already overcome the life of drugs.
She thought it was over, but now she's finding herself
being thrown back in with no shoes at that.
Now a lot of you have been asking,
what did I think of Spiral?
Where does it stack up with the other Saw movies?
Sarah and I have created a second video
where we rank every installment in the franchise.
If you enjoy my content and the topics I talk about,
you'll probably wanna go ahead and subscribe
to Possessed by Horror.
I originally found her channel and started talking to her
because I found that her reviews tended to line up
with my own horror movie taste.
She's become one of the few critics that I actually trust.
You'll find our video on the left, but before you go,
make sure you subscribe to CZsWorld
for new horrors every week,
ring the death bell for all notifications,
and I'll see you over in that other video,
assuming we both survive.
I guess if Sarah survives also.
I mean, we already made the video, so I think we're good.