Saw (2004) is an American horror film directed by James Wan in his feature debut and written by Leigh Whannell, from a story by both of them. Two men wake up chained in a filthy bathroom with a body between them. One is told he must kill the other to save his family. The man behind it is the Jigsaw Killer, who puts his victims through deadly “games” to test their will to live. Made for about $1 million and shot in 18 days, the film earned more than $100 million worldwide. It launched one of the most profitable horror franchises of all time and helped define 2000s horror.
At a glance
| Release date | January 19, 2004 (Sundance Film Festival); October 29, 2004 (US) |
| Director | James Wan |
| Writers | Leigh Whannell (screenplay); story by James Wan and Leigh Whannell |
| Based on | Saw (2003 short film) by Wan and Whannell |
| Starring | Cary Elwes, Leigh Whannell, Danny Glover, Monica Potter, Michael Emerson, Ken Leung, Tobin Bell |
| Runtime | 103 minutes |
| Rating | R (US, after re-editing; first rated NC-17) |
| Budget | $1 million to $1.2 million |
| Box office | $104 million worldwide |
| Franchise | Saw franchise: followed by Saw II (2005) and later sequels |
Plot summary
The photographer Adam (Leigh Whannell) wakes up in a dirty bathtub, his ankle chained to a pipe. Across the room, the oncologist Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) is chained the same way. Between them lies the body of an apparent suicide, holding a revolver and a tape recorder. Each man has a cassette in his pocket. Gordon’s tape tells him to kill Adam by six o’clock, or his wife and daughter will die. Then they find two hacksaws that are too weak to cut chain but strong enough to cut through a foot.
Gordon realizes their captor is the Jigsaw Killer, a murderer who never kills directly but traps his victims in deadly contraptions. Flashbacks show the obsessed Detective David Tapp (Danny Glover) and his partner hunting Jigsaw. They also introduce Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), the only known survivor of one of his traps. As the deadline approaches, the two prisoners begin to discover what links them.
Spoiler section: the twist
Gordon’s family is being held by Zep Hindle (Michael Emerson), a hospital orderly. Desperate, Gordon saws off his own foot and shoots Adam, who survives and kills Zep when he arrives. A tape on Zep’s body reveals that he was just another victim, forced to play along to get an antidote to a poison. Then the “corpse” on the floor stands up. He is John Kramer (Tobin Bell), Gordon’s terminally ill patient and the real Jigsaw. He tells Adam that the key to his chain went down the bathtub drain when he first woke up. Then he shuts the door with the words “game over,” leaving Adam in the dark.
Production and behind the scenes
After film school in Australia, Wan and Whannell, inspired by low-budget films like The Blair Witch Project and Pi, set out to write something they could afford to shoot. They decided the cheapest setup would be two actors in one room. Wan pitched the idea of two men chained in a bathroom with a body between them, and Whannell wrote the word “Saw” in his diary. The idea for Jigsaw came months later, when Whannell was waiting for an MRI after a run of migraines. He started wondering how someone would behave after being told they were about to die.
When they couldn’t get the script made in Australia, the pair went to Los Angeles with a short film based on the reverse bear trap scene. Whannell paid A$5,000 for it and played the victim himself. Producer Gregg Hoffman said his “jaw hit the floor” when he saw it. He and Evolution Entertainment’s Mark Burg and Oren Koules set up the Twisted Pictures label and gave the pair creative control, provided that Wan directed and Whannell starred. Filming began on September 22, 2003, at the Lacy Street Production Facility in Los Angeles and lasted 18 days on a shooting budget of $700,000. The bathroom was the only set built for the film, and its scenes were shot in sequence over six days. Cinematographer David A. Armstrong shot the whole film handheld, steady for Gordon and shaky for Adam. Charlie Clouser wrote the industrial-tinged score in six weeks.
Release and reception
Lions Gate bought worldwide rights at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where the film played three packed midnight screenings. The studio had planned to release it straight to video but put it in theaters for Halloween instead. The MPAA first gave it an NC-17 for graphic violence, and it was released as an R after re-editing. It opened at No. 3 on Halloween weekend with $18.2 million and went on to gross $55.1 million in the U.S. and Canada and $104 million worldwide. At the time, it was the most profitable horror film since Scream (1996).
Critics were split. It holds a 50% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and a Metacritic score of 46, and audiences gave it a “C+” CinemaScore. Empire‘s Kim Newman gave it four stars and praised its “intricate structure,” while Variety called it a “crude concoction.” Roger Ebert gave it two stars but said it was “well made and acted.” Several reviewers compared it to Se7en. Whannell acknowledged studying that film but noted that Saw is told from the victims’ point of view.
Legacy and influence
Saw became a Halloween institution. Saw II arrived a year later, and the series has continued through Saw X (2023), with Tobin Bell’s John Kramer at its center. Its success was often grouped with the “torture porn” trend of the mid-2000s, though Wan has said he didn’t intend that. The script had only one short torture scene and played “like a mystery thriller,” and the torture came later in the sequels. Bloody Disgusting called it “perhaps the most influential horror film of the decade.” The film also launched the careers of Wan and Whannell, and Wan went on to create The Conjuring series.
Trivia
- Whannell did his own bathtub stunt on the first day of filming, because the budget had no money left for a stunt performer.
- Glover filmed all his scenes in two days, and Elwes said he often had 12 to 16 pages of dialogue a day.
- Wan and Whannell did $400 worth of reshoots on their own, with Whannell standing in for other actors.
- Shawnee Smith, who is not a horror fan, first turned down the role of Amanda and changed her mind after watching the short.
- Lionsgate ran a Red Cross blood drive called “Give Til It Hurts,” which collected 4,249 pints of blood.
- The film was re-released in theaters for its 10th anniversary in 2014, and the unrated version returned to theaters for its 20th anniversary in 2024.
Related links
- Jigsaw (character)
- Saw franchise
- Saw II (2005), Jigsaw (2017) and Saw X (2023)
- James Wan (director) and Leigh Whannell (writer and star)
- Tobin Bell, Cary Elwes and Danny Glover (cast)
- The Conjuring (2013), Wan’s later horror franchise
