Us Saw sickos want to think about all ten Saw movies! This list ranks the franchise from best to worst.

Would you like to play a game? I created a Saw Score Card to grade each film on six criteria. I think the best Saws have creepy traps, gory kills, soap opera plots, a baffling twist at the end, cast recognizable celebrities to endure torture, and all shoehorned in a nonsense canon chronology. The more confusing, the better. I also made a bloody gears scorecard template with Canva, the perfect tool for creepy crafters like me.

I ranked the films by these criteria and ordered the list from best to worst because it’s less confusing that way. By all means, brutally murder me in the comments if you disagree with my ratings. Trigger Warning for discussions of torture, gore, and spoilers for all the Saw movies.

#1: Saw

It spawned a ten-film franchise, predicted escape rooms, ignited the 2000s “torture porn” horror subgenre, and introduced Jigsaw, The Game Playing Serial Killer. Saw is a great horror movie. Its core premise of waking up chained to a pipe in a dirty bathroom is genuinely terrifying. The grime and rough edges make the vibe intense and the confusing plot forgivable. I argue Jigsaw is one of the twenty-first century’s most prolific Hollywood movie monsters. A frail, old, rich psychopath with no conscience and nothing to lose! The movie is quintessentially 2004: handheld digital cameras, music video style editing, and a flip phone provide essential plot development, with nu-metal credit sequences bookending the film. Yet it’s right before the moment cell phones became ubiquitous because pagers, chorded phones, and tape recorders are still vital plot points. The traps are practical, simple, and have incredible prop design. If you enjoy horror movies, Saw is essential for 2000s Hollywood horror.

Best Death/Trap? The Bathroom is iconic, but it has to be The Reverse Bear Trap that rips your head open mouth first. One of the few escapes in the series!

#2: Saw II

How did they follow up the Locked Room indie horror hit? They gave them more money and opened up a whole haunted house! Jigsaw makes wacky traps like a wrist-splitting box or a gunshot door peephole and uses the cartoonish bad guy classic of “sleeping gas” to knock people out. Amanda’s back brings an exciting twist requiring a DVD burner — a plot almost as 2006 as her haircut. We meet the dumbest character in the series: a crooked cop, played by Donnie Wahlberg, Mark’s big brother and former Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch member. As each film explains, Jigsaw has informants in the City of Saw PD who work together to punish criminals and themselves.

Best Death/Trap? The needle pit. The needles get jabbed in the skin as the hands search for the key. Plus, when I was a teen, there was an urban legend that creeps go to clubs to stick people with AIDS needles. I imagined this was the pit where they got all the needles.

#3: Saw X

Saw X is the first Saw movie in almost 20 years that feels like an actual movie, not a confusing money laundering scheme. A comprehendible plot, a good twist that makes sense, and an actual justification for why the tortured people deserve it. Cancerman Jigsaw John makes a compelling protagonist, and the Elizabeth Theranos-esque villainess manages to be eviler than Jigsaw. Plus, Pigsaw Amanda (from Saw 1–7) helps make things actually scary and not just gross. I was scared because I didn’t know what would happen next despite this movie being a prequel, and I actually know what happens next.

It is really gross, though. I had to step out to the lobby to wait for some torture to end, and when I connected to the AMC Stubbs A-List Wifi, I had a quick existential crisis that obsessively watching and cataloging all the Saw movies might be a waste of life, and by Jigsaw rules thereby punishable by a painful test.

The tenth is not as silly as the preceding 8 movies, and I personally prefer the big-aughts silliness and stupidity to the gritty and gory humanizing of Jigsaw. I see Jigsaw as a deranged terrorist or monster who’s impossible to identify with, kinda of like Michael Meyers or Freddy Krueger.

But I must admit, they rebooted the franchise correctly. The movie is not stupid like most of the Saw movies. Everything’s in its right place. It actually has the same score as Saw II! I used kills as the tiebreaker, as Saw X has the lowest body count in franchise history, with only six. Plus, I prefer Saw II because it’s a haunted house movie.

#4: Saw 3D: The Final Chapter

Saw 3D: The Final Chapter concludes Jigsaw’s confusing, gory glory in extra dimensions. The framing story is fun: a guy fakes being a Jigsaw victim for clout and publishes a harrowing memoir. He scams support groups for Jigsaw victims. Dozens of people across the City of Saw huddle each night in church basements to cope with Jigsaw’s tests.

The kills are Giallo-style silly gore, and blood flies from the screen in 3D because, in 2010, everything was 3D after the success of Avatar. And the plot is full of soap opera drama and canon shenanigans. Jigsaw’s wife is back, and the half-face cop goes nuts. We finally see what happened to the doctor from Saw! The face ripper mask finally goes off! Two dangling people have a kickfight over a sharp metal fan! This one is funny, fast, and playful, the Saw III that should have been.

Best Death/Trap? Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington plays a Neo-Nazi who gets melted to death in a car for one of the best deaths in the series. It’s on YouTube.

#5: Saw IV

Jigsaw’s dead, and things get grosser, dumber, and more overwrought with contrived explanations for how Jigsaw strikes from beyond the grave. During Jigsaw’s autopsy, the cops find a tape in his stomach announcing he’s still playing games! Mark Hoffman replaces as a creeper evil psycho cop. Jigsaw grooms him into setting traps and carrying out his vision of skin ripping, skin sewing, and lots of gross skin stuff. The plot’s full of Jigsaw lore, introducing us to the Bride of Jigsaw and Jigsaw’s Attorney! We learn Jigsaw used to be a “non-profit” real estate developer who redeveloped urban factories into low-income housing until a guy carelessly opened a door too hard and hit his pregnant wife with a doorknob, causing her to miscarry. And right after that? He gets diagnosed with cancer! Jigsaw snapped. He’s been redeveloping his factories into torture factories.

Best Death/Trap? They make Donny put a noose around his neck and stand on a gigantic melting ice cube. Once it melts, two cubes smash his head. My favorite gruesome execution of the series. It’s so dumb, and it’s also on YouTube.

#6: Saw VI

It’s 2009! Jigsaw Vs. The Health Insurance! Jigsaw’s torturing the creeps who deserve it most: predatory lenders, insurance actuaries, lawyers, and brokers. “It’s a business! My decisions aren’t made this way!” the insurance attorney screams as he decides which employee’s life to save. That same guy denied Jigsaw treatment for his cancer. The traps are silly and look carnivalesque. The plot is simple, but the twist is alright. Saw IV was the end of torture porn. Paranormal Activity would make $193 million that year, or 839 times its $230,000 budget! Goodbye, torture porn, hello found footage, as the American empire stops shock and awe and starts the surveillance era.

Best Death/Trap? The shotgun scary-go-round is one of six traps with a shotgun rigged up to shoot somebody in the face, but it is the only shotgun trap with a carousel. It’s also a reminder that your boss would probably prefer to murder you before facing consequences or experiencing discomfort.

#7: Spiral: From the Book of Saw

A provocative failed reboot. When this came out, everybody said it stunk, and compared to the average Chris Rock or Samuel L. Jackson movie, it stinks. But compared to Saw movies? It’s mid.

Chris Rock pretends to be an angry cop, yells every line, and does standup bits about divorce while investigating grizzly crime scenes. Samuel L. Jackson plays his dad and gets a hilarious fake mustache! Ultimately, they try to make a big political statement about police shootings, string up Jackson in this wacky cyborg trap, and reveal one of the funniest traps in the series. Critical dramatic moments come through braindead dialogue like “Fuck me? No. Fuck you!”

It’s missing two crucial Saw tropes. There’s no Tobin Bell, so I had to subtract a point. There are also no confusing continuity explanations, and the plot is miserably boring with a telegraphed twist. Nevertheless, the traps are high-budget, and genuine celebrities are getting tortured!

Best Death/Trap? The cop who must cut out his tongue or get hit by a subway train. That must hurt!

#8: Jigsaw

The boring reboot. More flashbacks, more cops, more complicated mythos. Saw II had a house, and Jigsaw had a barn. John was sneaking off on the weekends to convert a farm into a torture factory to teach people lessons. A decade after his death, it started killing people. Is it the real guy!? No, it’s the cops that Jigsaw trained, which isn’t surprising because that’s who it is in every movie. This one is confusing. The traps are barn-themed, and the kills. There isn’t a twist.

Best Death/Trap? The Grain Silo Trap. Two people fall into a grain silo, and they will die by corn, drowning in corn. A different guy doesn’t chop his leg up with a lever and some jagged blades.

#9: Saw V

Jigsaw grooms a cop and tortures real estate developers. Directed by the franchise’s production designer, David Hackl, I thought the traps were evocative of the Iraqi invasion and Abu Grave: hand-crushing boxes, waterboarding, decapitations, nails and glass used for improvised explosive devices, and jumper cable electrocution. The plot is horrible. Not enough, Tobin. It’s a lousy cop procedural about two cops who look too much alike, so it’s hard to tell them apart. The beginning is also the ending of III and IV, I guess? This one has the lowest kill count since the first movie. Thus, it’s boring.

Best Death & Trap: Ten Pints of Sacrifice. Two people must fill ten pints of blood by touching a circular saw, or IEDs would blow up right next to them and impale them with nails.

#10: Saw III

Saw III has the same structure as Saw II without the good traps, silly story, or humor. Instead, it has vague Christian undertones and a chain-filled sadomasochistic relationship between Jigsaw John and Amanda. A lot of fans like this one, but I hate it. The kills are very gory and have a severe and depressing vibe — graphic imagery like a brain tumor extraction or Donnie Wahlberg smashing his ankle with a toilet lid adds to this. Few games get played. Mostly, they just mess with a sad guy whose son died. We see Amanda set up traps in the first two movies. Plus, Amanda’s games suck. The people playing can’t escape by ripping their ears off or whatever. The last twist is stupid and gets retconned away. In a franchise known for being often ridiculous, confusing, disgusting, and dull, this one is the best example of the franchise’s flaws.

Best Death/Trap? While the traps in Jeff’s trial are interesting (the scary freezer, the vat of pig carcasses, the crucifix), the games aren’t much fun because the victim can’t escape. I suppose the Angel Trap is best because it’s insane, metal angel wings and robot arms that rip a cop’s ribcage apart if she doesn’t dunk her hand in a vat of acid. Confusing, senseless, gory, somewhat funny?

Live or Die?

Death is a reason to reflect, and in the Saw franchise, there are 101 deaths and 115 traps, so that’s a lot of reflection and a low survival rate.

Why do these movies exist? Like many media created in the 2000s, the Saw franchise is stupid, offensive, reactionary, rude, silly, intensely violent, and bizarre. Like a gore video, your friend showed you how to make you throw up. Twenty years ago, I watched Saw at a sleepover, and then a year later, we snuck into Saw II. We screamed and squirmed at the simulated torture.

Twenty years later, Saw X is as good as any of the other sequels.

And me? I’m still wondering what I would do if I woke up naked, chained in a dirty bathroom, with a key in my intestine, or something insane.

Follow along at home with your own Saw Score Ranking Calculator. Here’s a Google Sheet with all the movies, criteria, traps, and kills, updated with Saw X. Enjoy!

What do you think? Should I live or die? Comment below.