So we’re going to go about this one a little bit different. While counting the Halloween franchise, I mostly counted only Michael’s kills, logged how he killed them, and totaled the main killer for the franchise. I might go back to that (somewhat) for other franchises, but we’re going to have to set some rules for Saw. Of course, with that I’m also going to have to make some more comparisons when I start looking at franchises as a whole. So the rule with the Saw franchise is I’m going to look at who’s responsible for the trap. John Kramer might have said for pretty much every person in the first several movies to be put into a trap, but as an example, I’m going to count Detective Kerry (in Saw IV I think? I can’t remember, I’m rewatching them as I do these and obviously I’m on the first one) as being killed by Amanda Young since John credits that as being her trap. Also, since every trap in the franchise is unique, I’ll just be counting trap kills as “Killed in a trap” for brevity purposes on the charts. I’ll put some thoughts down during the actual count and describe it a bit, but I’m already going to be low on ways to compare these killers to other franchises just because there are so few cliché horror movie deaths in these movies, which is such a good thing. Anyway, lets get into it.
The Kills
John Kramer (Jigsaw)
- Paul – KIAT – Has to traverse a maze of razer wire to escape. Dude is given 2 hours to crawl through a bunch of razer wire, and by the end of the maze he dies. I’ve seen theories that he died because he was trying to rush and get through, but if you notice he’s at the very end of the maze when the time runs out. It’s possible that he wasted some time getting cut and of course they mention that the razor cuts him so deep there it tears his actual stomach spilling stomach acids on the ground but he would have still had to haul quite a lot of ass to get to the other side. I think he was going to die regardless in this one.
- Mark – KIAT – Has to get through a room with numbers everywhere to find the combination to a safe that contains an antidote to a poison he was injected with. Of course his only source of light is a candle, and he’s smeared with a flammable substance. Oh, and to make this even easier, the floor is covered in glass and he’s butt ass naked. Throughout this scene, it doesn’t show how he’s supposed to guess which of these numbers are the correct one or what order they are supposed to go in, so I’d say this trap is pretty impossible regardless. The glass part isn’t so bad, he’d just have to scuff his feet around instead of making a normal step, but the numbers bit…right.
- I’m guessing through IMDb this guy’s name is Dead Cellmate – Stabbed to death – Yeah, I’m not even going to say he was killed in a trap, and I’m not going to credit Amanda Young for this either because her hands were pretty much tied to make this happen, so I’m saying John did it. So the trap is Amanda has a bear trap on her face and has to get it out of this guys stomach within a minute. John tells Amanda that he’s dead, but he’s clearly not. It doesn’t say what this guy did to deserve this, and this guy was injected with a paralytic and has no chance of survival. Bullshit trap when you look at it in this guys perspective.
- Detective Steven Sing – I’m not going to count this as killed in a trap, he’s killed in a booby trap. I’m just going to go with he was shot to death. I’ll be able to count plenty of people in this fashion in the future, sounds like a safe bet to me.
Through the climax, Tapp and Zep are killed, but I’m not really sure I care to accredit them to John. Sure, he’s kind of responsible because Adam wouldn’t be in the position to be killing Zep and Zep wouldn’t be in the position to be killing Tapp without John doing his Jigsaw thing, but I’m still not sure he’d be held responsible for their deaths.
Conclusion
John Kramer kills 4 people in Saw.
| Method: | Amount of Kills: |
|---|---|
| Killed in a trap | 3 |
| Shot to death | 1 |
Of course the next one will have a bit more on the table front to compare all of the movies. Thankfully I don’t have a bunch of timelines to compare with this franchise as well. Once I wrap up Spiral I’ll compare this franchise to Halloween in a few ways, I might make a separate post for it. I imagine this time next year this will be a lot cooler to look at once I have a lot of franchises to throw at each other, but I gotta walk before I run, right? I’m going to set these up a few days a part so expect the next one Thursday the 3rd.