Saw (2004) Ending Explained

When it was released in 2004, the Saw The ending completely changed the horror landscape, starting a blockbuster franchise filled with shocking twists. The influential film had a budget of just $1,000,000 dollars and went on to make $100,000,000 worldwide (via Box Office Mojo), launched a billion-dollar franchise, and turned director James Wan into one of the most in-demand directors of the 2000s. This is an even greater success, because it has a “rotten” 50% on rotten tomatoes. But while the franchise focused more on the signature graphic violence, the original movie had a compelling thriller narrative.

The original film is James Wan’s favorite Saw Movie, which is hardly surprising because of its original concept where the killer gives his victims a chance to live with his bad “game.” Saw Follows Dr. Lawrence Gordon and Adam, who wake up in a dirty bathroom stuck to the wall with a dead body separating them. They have no recollection of how they got there or why they are there, and when they find out that his family has been kidnapped, a tape recorder tells Gordon that he and his family will be released if he kills Adam by 6:00. What follows is a spectacular twist ending.

What happens in the end

John Kramer appears during the last moments of Saw

When the clock strikes six at the end of SawZep, an official who works in Gordon’s hospital and had watched the “game” on a surveillance camera, tries to kill Gordon’s wife and daughter. They fight back, and Zep flees to the undisclosed location where Gordon and Adam are trapped. In the bathroom, Gordon saws off his feet still not knowing if his family is safe, freeing himself. He shoots Adam, hoping it’s not too late to save his wife and daughter. When he arrived, Zep finds Adam’s body, and Gordon asks Zep to free him, but Zep tells him it’s too late.

However, Adam jumps on Zep and bludgeons him with a toilet lid, revealing that the bullet only wounded him. Gordon promises to get help and crawls away. Adam knocks down the door, looks for a key, but finds another tape recorder instead. The tape reveals that Zep was a victim of Jigsaw’s games as well, and killing them was the only way he would be given the antidote to the poison that Jigsaw put in his body. The dead body in the middle of the room then wakes up, revealing itself to be John Kramer, who has been alive the whole time. Kramer leaves the room and seals the door shut, leaving Adam to die.

Why Adam and Dr. Lawrence Gordon were in the room together

Jigsaw gave them both a chance at redemption

The Jigsaw Killer chooses his victims based on who he believes they need to learn a lesson, as his victims tend to have bad habits and wits that may mean they don’t value their lives. For Dr. Lawrence Gordon, it was extramarital affairs. The Jigsaw Killer thinks that surviving the traps will prove that the victims deserve to continue living and that they will never go back to their old lives. And if they lose the game, They will die in the most disturbing way possible. The killer put Gordon in one of his games because he thought he never would. Have a match.

But Adam’s test in Saw was much heavier. The photographer was hired by former detective David Tapp to follow and take photos of Gordon, as Tapp thought Gordon was the Jigsaw Killer. But while the two victims are connected like this, no specific reason was given for why the Jigsaw Killer chose Adam as a victim, at least not as specific as why Gordon was in there. However, he is chastised for watching others from the shadows, as the tape tells him, “Are you going to see yourself die here today, Adam, or do something about it?“

Adam could have easily escaped

Jigsaw’s plan included a method of early release

Adam suffered a lot through this time Saw The end has come, but he could have spared himself the immense physical suffering if he had approached his situation more cautiously. Using flashbacks, the disturbing tests of the Jigsaw Killer are on full show. But after Jigsaw’s reverse bear trap, where Amanda Young had to disembowel a man to find a key hidden in his body, it’s clear that Adam could have it much easier.

When John Kramer wakes up at the end of the movie, he tells Adam that the key to unlocking himself is simply in the bathtub. However, when he woke up hours earlier, that key washed down the plug hole when he removed the plug. In all the splashing and frantic jumping around, Adam lost his one chance to escape without being injured or harmed.

Zep was just another victim of Jigsaw

The character the movie teased as Jigsaw is caught in a game of his own

until the very end of SawThe plot seems to suggest that Zep is the Jigsaw killer, although this turns out to be a red herring. What’s more, Zep himself was also a part of his own jigsaw game. throughout seen, Zep watches the surveillance camera in the bathroom, kidnaps Gordon’s family, and tries to shoot Gordon. However, of all Jigsaw’s many apprentices, Zep was short-lived, literally.

In fact, Zep is not even an apprentice, but just another victim of Jigsaw. Zep is abducted by the Jigsaw Killer, who injects slow-acting poison into his body. Although they seemingly formed a close bond at the hospital, Jigsaw chose to test Zep because he wasted his life with dreams that were never going to come true, such as becoming a doctor.

John Kramer is the real Jigsaw Killer

Tobin Bell’s character started his movie legacy in Saw

As Zep was another one of Jigsaw’s victims, there was a shocking revelation at the end of Saw That John Kramer is the real Jigsaw Killer. Although his story would be told in much more detail in the sequels, John Kramer was in the hospital bed when Gordon taught the medical students, which was a subtle clue to be the real killer.

Gordon explained to his students that Kramer had terminal brain cancer, and his illness inspired him to become the Jigsaw Killer. He doesn’t see himself as the evil one and really thinks that he improves people’s lives, but also that those who don’t value life don’t deserve it.

The end of the saw is often referred to later in the series

The following nine movies often curled back to the original 2004

Part of that added to the iconic nature of the Saw The ending was how often it was referenced throughout the franchise. The climax of saw II Ended right back in the bathroom trap where Adam’s corpse and Gordon’s feet could be seen before Eric Matthews was left for dead there. Seen where revealed that Amanda returned to the room to mercy kill Adam by suffocation. There were also scenes throughout that included Amanda and Hoffman as Jigsaw’s apprentices helping to set the trap from the first film.

The biggest call back to the original Saw The end has come Saw: The Final Chapter. The entire series built up to the revelation that Jigsaw had another apprentice in Dr. Gordon, who was saved after seeing the leg. He helped Jigsaw in the shadows and was ultimately the man who got the upper hand. Hoffman at the end of the original series of movies, beyond how pivotal the ending of the first film was.

Due to the success and impact of the Saw Endless, follow-up installments of the series tried to replicate that moment. A lot of them were well done with a positive reception towards Amanda and Gordon being revealed as apprentices, although the audience was less pleased with Jigsaw’s death in Seen where And Hoffman’s discovery at the end of Saw IV. Despite this, they were shocking moments. Spiral: Book of Saw Struggled there, with many fans easily figuring out the twist way before the reveal, showing that the series may have lost its hard to surprise viewers.

The real meaning of the ending of SO

The last moments are an exploration of survival instincts

The idea of Saw was created by the writer and director trying to make a movie with a small budget, but Wan and writer Leigh Whannell took the premise of ​​​​two people in a room as far as it can go. It may have been just the beginning of Dr. Gordon’s Saw timeline, but Whannell and Wan originally intended to shock audiences, and that’s exactly what the 2004 movie’s morbid ending did. The team didn’t plan on Saw Being the beginning of a billion-dollar franchise, and as popular as ordinary sequels can be, the shocking ending of Saw Works better if you’re considering a standalone movie.

The last few minutes of Saw They are full of mystery and twists, but it also tackles the idea of ​​valuing life and survival instincts. Saw Consider how much someone is willing to lose and how much pain they are willing to suffer to avoid death. Ultimately, it’s all about how each individual person values ​​their life differently, and it tries to provide different perspectives on that. And regardless of whether it pulled off such a profound message successfully or totally failed, Saw It does it in such a shocking and entertaining way.

The End of the Saw set a franchise trend but could never be matched

Saw sequels have struggled to live up to the end of the 2004 original

Saw Released two decades ago, in 2004, and in the time since there have been nine sequels and a spinoff. As a horror franchise, few can boast as many twists and turns as these Saw Movies. Almost every entry has moments at their end that change the perspective of the previous story, with some being more effective than others. however, None of these Saw Sequels have twists that are nowhere near as effective as the 2004 original.

The final reveal that John Kramer, the real Jigsaw Killer, was the corpse on the floor present over Saw was – without an iota of hyperbole – mind-blowing. It’s arguably the reason the movie is considered so effective, and if it was simply that Zep was the killer all along, it’s likely that future Saw Sequels would not have happened. Few movies about serial killers have used the trope of the killer hiding in plain sight, and what’s more, the twist didn’t feel forced or unbelievable.

However, this also created problems for the Saw Sequels. It was simply a moment that none of them could match. While there were many impressive twists in the Saw Films that followed (and just as many unimpressive ones), none even came close to matching 2004’s Saw ending This, in some ways, is what 2023’s Saw X Was such a refreshing return to form, as it leant to explore John Kramer as a character rather than trying to shock the audience with a big reveal at the end.

Like many horror franchises, Saw is a series with many highs and lows. It also suffered from problems identifying exactly what it was offering, with many of them leaning too far into trying to create overly complicated plot twists in an attempt to capture what made the 2004 original so great. (Although the worst Saw Movies are arguably those that simply try to shock viewers with as much gore as possible at the expense of a gripping narrative). Finally, since the Saw Franchise is still ongoing, there is still the potential for another ending that lives up to the first entry, although it will be a difficult feat to say the least.