The Saw franchise is chock-full of some of the most intense and deranged deaths in any mainstream horror film. Saw was responsible for starting the “torture” genre of horror, as you are forced to witness numerous victims fall prey to the Jigsaw Killer’s sadistic contraptions. This franchise can be hard to watch if you have a weak stomach.
Saw is especially notorious for its increasingly complex lore and mystery surrounding the Jigsaw Killer and his never-ending list of accomplices and apprentices. The story is a lot to take in if you aren’t immersed in the history of Saw, but most viewers just watch this series for the ingenious traps and extreme deaths, and some traps are a cut above the rest.
Updated on September 25, 2023, by Ryan Heffernan:
With its elaborate death devices teaching thematic lessons of the precious value of life to those who neglect it, the Saw franchise is renowned for its appetite and ingenuity when it comes to conjuring creative traps. With Saw X opening in theaters on September 29, fans of the torturous horror saga can rest assured that the bloody misery is set to continue in all its squeamish glory.
12 The Horsepower Trap
‘Saw 3D’ (2010)
Among the most unforgettable Saw traps throughout the series, the Horsepower Trap is as violently twisted as it is thematically loaded. Its victims are a mob of skinheads who have been targeted by Jigsaw on account of their racist actions.
It features the gang’s leader Evan (Chester Bennington) glued to the driver’s seat of a car with his girlfriend chained under the vehicle, one of his friends chained to its back seats, and another chained to the garage door in front of the car. Evan is given 30 seconds to peel himself from the seat and pull a lever to save himself and his friends. His failure to do so leads to an immediate though elaborate eruption of extreme violence.
11 The Pendulum Trap
‘Saw V’ (2008)
In addition to being a gruesome device, the pendulum trade from Saw V also has the added bonus of being inspired by one of the all-time great minds of horror storytelling. Based on Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum,” the trap saw its victim lie helpless as a large, swinging ax was lowered in intervals to slice them in half.
Interestingly, the trap wasn’t the invention of the Jigsaw killer but of a detective seeking revenge on the man who murdered his sister and got out of prison early on a technicality. Not only was Seth Baxter (Joris Jarsky) slowly sawn in half, but he also had his hands crushed in vices as well which rendered him completely defenseless as he faced his death.
10 The Cycle Trap
‘Jigsaw’ (2017)
A trap as gruesome as it was elaborate, the Cycle Trap consisted of the victim, Mitch (Mandela Van Peebles) dangling upside-down in a cone-shaped machine as spinning blades whizzed around him. The victim in this case was targeted as, years earlier, he had sold a faulty bike to the killer’s nephew which resulted in the young boy’s death, and adding further agony to Mitch’s challenge, the motor that powered that bike also powered the trap.
The only way to stop the trap was to reach a handbrake at the bottom of the coil, something Mitch very nearly accomplished before the trap was halted by a fellow captive of Jigsaw. His initial relief quickly became a deadly panic when the trap sprung back to life, causing Mitch to flail and be shredded to a bloody and brutal death.
9 Venus Fly Trap
‘Saw II’ (2005)
After the success of the agonizingly suspenseful Saw, Saw II needed to start fast to reassure audiences that the violent, visceral horror was only going to go up a notch. It did that ingeniously, using the basic yet unforgettably effective Venus Fly Trap death mask as its startling cold open.
While the idea of the mask snapping shut was horrific, even more terrifying was that in order to free himself from it, Michael (Noam Jenkins) must retrieve a key lodged behind his eyeball. The sequence as a whole is a melody of toe-curling tension which culminates in the trap snapping shut on Michael’s skull, killing him instantly.
8 The Silence Circle
‘Saw 3D’ (2010)
Even with the in-your-face horror of Saw embracing the 3-D experience, the Silence Circle offered the most intriguing moment of Saw 3D. With his complicit publicist secured in a rounded trap with sharp metal rods nearing her throat, an author who became famous peddling a lie that he survived one of Jigsaw’s traps struggles to save the day.
The only way to rescue the girl is for Bobby (Sean Patrick Flanery) to pull a key up from her stomach which is attached to a fishing hook that will pierce her as he withdraws it. Every time she screams, the metal rods get closer as well. The trap itself is brutally unfair and brilliantly leaves much of the gore up to the viewer’s imagination right up until the end when the victim’s neck is skewered by the sharpened rods.
7 The Classroom Trap
‘Saw III’ (2006)
The Jigsaw killer and his copycats are seldom ever fair, but rarely do they devise a trap that genuinely can not be escaped. That was the case though when Troy (J. Larose) faced the Classroom Trap in which he had to rip metal chains from his body to escape a bomb blast.
While the chains in his hands, shoulders, obliques, arms, and Achilles tendons were awful to watch him escape, the final link – through his mouth and lower jaw – hardly gave him a sporting chance. Even if he had broken free, killer Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) had welded the door shut, so he would have had no chance of escaping the nail bomb.
6 The Angel Wings Trap
‘Saw III’ (2006)
Imagine waking up to find yourself dangling in the air, spikes pierced into your ribs. The only way out is a key at the bottom of a glass of acid, and the front of your body will be ripped clean off if you don’t get the key. You just need to get the key to free yourself if your hands don’t burn from the acid first.
This trap is from Saw III, and it marks the beginning of Saw traps that are seemingly unfair and even more diabolical than before, where the way to freedom isn’t so easy anymore. The trap itself is vicious, but the cinematography of the scene when Allison Kerry (Dina Meyer) dies from the trap is as graphically bloody as it is oddly beautiful.
5 Razor Wire Maze
‘Saw’ (2004)
The Razor Wire Maze trap from the first Saw movie feeds into the fear of isolation and helplessness. In this trap, a man is stuffed inside a maze in a tight crawlspace, with countless bundles of razor wire. On top of all that, the victim is given two hours to make his way out of the maze, or the door to the way out will seal itself forever.
Unsurprisingly, the panicked man doesn’t find the exit in time and succumbs to the razor wire. Its ‘death by 1000 cuts’ physical torment is obviously a harrowing thought, but just as terrifying in this instance is the psychological anguish of the trap as its evil sadism lingers on the helpless victim as he ventures through the slicing, claustrophobic nightmare in vane.
4 The Needle Pit
‘Saw II’ (2005)
The Saw franchise has always been at its most devastating and terrifying when the Jigsaw killers are operating in the cruelest fashion imaginable. While the idea of severed limbs or gored faces is completely inaccessible to most audience members, the sensation of thousands of prickly needles is something many people can envision.
That was what Amanda had to go through when, as one of a group of survivors trying to escape a series of traps, she was cast into the needle pit to find the key that would unlock the door to a second antidote the group needed. It remains one of the most brilliant set pieces in the franchise and is just as nauseating and unnerving today as it was when the film was released in 2005.
3 The Rack
‘Saw III’ (2006)
Jigsaw calls this trap his personal favorite, and it’s easy to see why. The Rack from the criminally underrated Saw III easily takes the cake as the bloodiest and most brutal trap devised in the saga. It sees the victim’s limbs snapped one-by-one like toothpicks and ripped from the flesh before their neck is snapped as their head is twisted around.
The contraption was actually based on a medieval torture instrument and bore a certain resemblance to a crucifix which gave it an added heft on an almost subconscious level. Suffice it to say, the Rack excels at being a visually harrowing, viscerally disturbing, and agonizingly slow and heartbreaking device within the context of the franchise to be one of the best Saw traps.
2 Shotgun Carousel
‘Saw VI’ (2009)
The problem with multiple people forced into a trap together is that it’s unfair; at least one person is guaranteed to die, often complicating Jigsaw’s messages about the preservation of life. However, in Saw VI, we see the corrupt CEO of Umbrella Health having to choose one out of six people strapped to a spinning carousel, with one person being eliminated with a shotgun at a time.
Not only is this the most interesting trap to come out of this awkward era of Saw, but it’s also so thematically rich and powerful – a healthcare CEO choosing who lives and who dies. It’s a long and intense scene in what is probably the greatest contraption to come out of Saw.
1 Reverse Bear Trap
‘Saw’ (2004)
The Reverse Bear Trap contraption can be viewed as the trap from the Saw franchise. First appearing in the original Saw movie, it is usually secured to the victim’s head by a padlock which they are given a time limit to unlock before the trap springs into action.
With the trap attached to each of the victim’s jaws and designed to rip their face apart as it snaps open, it is one of the most viscerally disturbing devices in the entire franchise. A prolific device in the Saw saga, it has appeared in seven different Saw films as well as video games and shorts, over which time it has cemented itself as one of the most terrifying things to have ever come from the horror genre.
