You wake up in an unfamiliar, dirty bathroom, shackled to a pipe. Across from you is the dead bloody body of a man who appears to have shot himself. The prisoner on the opposite side of the room just managed to get the cassette player off the corpse's other hand and is about to play both of the cassettes you two just found in your pockets. The contents of the tapes have ironic remarks about both your daily lives and your current situation. However it isn't just mockery. It's an objective, a saving grace to prevent your deaths.

The man across from you must find a way to escape his death. And you are tasked with killing him before 6 AM. The board is ready, the rules are laid down. Let the game begin.

Saw is a series of movies known for the trope of the "death game" and the gore that comes with it. Survival is always attainable if you follow the rules, but with the stakes being so high the rules will be hard to follow.

Saw is not the first view into the idea of the death game - we've had gladiators since even before Ancient Rome - but it is special in the way that it treats it. As opposed to other later movies, Saw (2004) does not lean too heavily into the shock value, saving the gore for only the traps that establish the legend of Jigsaw and then the climax at the end.

Instead, Saw leans a lot on the mystery. Who really are Dr. Gordon and Adam? Why did the Jigsaw Killer kidnap them? And of course, how can they win the game without killing one another? This mix of horror, detective drama and escape room puzzles is what made Saw such a great movie.

This is why I will not spoil it. Please watch it on your own.

Instead, I want to talk about the cinematography of the reverse bear trap scene, so please watch it. Optionally, you can also watch the original Saw (2003) short film - it depicts the same turn of events, but with a more rudimentary story and direction.

First, there is something fascinating about the direction they took in all of these scenes. Most of the movie is pretty blue. The small light in the first shot is blue, Dr. Gordon's shirt is blue, the bathroom's fluorescent lights tint Adam's and the dead man's white shirt and the (mostly) white wall in blue. Moments outside of the bathroom, however, do not have a predominant colour.

You will know from colour theory that blue is associated with sadness, but the movie is using it for its meaning in calmness and stasis. Dr. Gordon and Adam must stay calm and think about their situation. This calming blue communicates to the audience that, despite the time pressure, there is still time to think critically and solve the puzzles in the bathroom.

Contrast this with the smaller scale traps.

These scenes are drenched in green. In fact, ask any Saw fan what colour the franchise is and they will tell you - this series is very green.

Green and yellow are the colour of vomit and several molds. We instinctively associate these tones with disease, and as such their presence in movies and sets can be used to convey the feeling of uneasiness and disgust. Green is also heavily associated with nausea - probably because you feel nausea before you vomit.

Lastly, green is often used for the idea of the eerie supernatural. While there are no supernatural elements in Saw, the presence of the all-knowing game master that is Jigsaw and the playing of a game against death all bring to the forefront ideas of the supernatural. There is a reason you were chosen for this game, and you are now being punished for your transgressions.

SlowBurnHorror actually published a wonderful article on the significance of green in horror back in 2021, if you want to check it out later! Anyway, back to the scene.

We start at the police station with Amanda - a victim of Jigsaw that managed to survive - trying to remember what happened. The camera is zooming in on her face.

The zoom in is violently interrupted by a shot circling around her strapped to a chair, trying to get free and shrieking but being unable to scream. This goes by in the blink of an eye. While this isn't where the memory begins, it is the first thing she remembers because the stress of the situation is overwhelming, and this is a brilliant way of showing it.

Then calmness. This is where the memory truly begins. "I woke up. All I could taste was blood. And metal."

She tries to move, and upon realising she's strapped to a chair she starts trying to fight it. Despite her attempts, calling someone is useless - not only because she is nowhere she could be heard, but also because she has a strange device blocking her screams. She's still somewhat under the effect of whatever drug was used to kidnap her, so she's still mostly disoriented and her movements are still weak.

We get some great shots here, taken for just about a second and a half at a time, all with a different movement and viewed from a different angle. It really sells the idea that she's repeatedly attempting to set herself free, despite the sequence being really short.

Mechanical sounds fade in and become louder, her movements become more erratic and the scream she wants to let out is only heard in her head. The camera movements in this section are really quick and disorientating until the camera locks into the view of the television. Amanda takes a moment to calm down, and Billy the Puppet appears on screen for the first time.

Jigsaw - through the puppet in the recording - explains the game. Amanda has a device strapped to her face, one that after the timer runs out will force her mouth open permanently. "Think of it as a reverse bear trap." he says "Here, I'll show you."

I understand that the objective is just to shock her - a mannequin isn't flexible and so you can't "rip it open permanently" without it just exploding. If I had to guess, I'd say that's part of the symbolism, but it's disappointing that we never get to see the reverse bear trap actually leave gore in this movie. Maybe some other time.

After this, Jigsaw explains to her how to get out of the trap. "There is only one key to open the device. It's in the stomach of your dead cellmate." his voice became deeper for a second there. "Look around, Amanda, know that I'm not lying."

"Better hurry up. Live or die. Make your choice."

And hurry up she does! Amanda struggles to get break free from the chair. The camera spins around her at great speed as her movements become more and more erratic. The camera zooms in and out in random places, the lights around her flash, the audio is that of turbine winds and electrical shocks - likely to remind the audience of executions by electric chair. Her movements do look like she's being electrocuted, and you can really feel the time pressure.

The camera slows down as soon as she sets herself free. There is finally a time to breathe and think about things.

Unfortunately, the time pressure was not real. Once Amanda gets up, the wire that stopped the timer from starting becomes loose. It's now that the game begins.

Saw is ultimately a series of movies about the human resolve to live. It came out during a time when emo culture was on the rise and people had started to embrace despair and nihilism as a part of their identity. Teens and young adults looked and acted like they were ready to die, and Saw is the movie that puts that to the test. If you want to die, do nothing. But if you find it in yourself a will to live you didn't know you had, now is the time to fight for it. Jigsaw admires this human resolve, he wants you to struggle so you can start to be thankful and truly live your life to the fullest. And this scene is what sells that thesis.

Now that she realises she's on a really strict timer, she starts grappling with the machine. She wants to get it off, she wants to fight it because ultimately she WANTS to live. And nothing shows that despair more than the way these scenes are edited, with the footage speeding up while she bangs her head in an attempt to set herself free. The camera walks around her, often cutting back to an earlier moment for a different camera angle, with certain shots being more zoomed in than others. Once again, we hear her muffled screams - the ones she can only shriek inside her head and that no one other than the audience can hear. Those turbines, where a loud sound is only heard momentarily, then cut off, then comes back on again repeatedly are back in full force. We may be looking at Amanda, but the survival instinct is the one taking over.

We cut back to the police station. Honestly, that was all I wanted to talk about - the editing and how it perfected stress and the overwhelming need of the human spirit to survive. That is what really impressed me about the Saw franchise the first time I watched it, and that's what this post is a love letter to. However, the scene is not over.

"And then I saw the body." Amanda stands tall above the body. walks around it. We have a close up of his face - he doesn't look dead, but he also isn't moving. She rolls up his shirt and...

"And there was a knife." She's sobbing. She knows what she must do.

She holds up the knife, and the camera focuses on the timer on the back of her head, reminding her - and us - that she does not have any time to regret her actions. Unfortunately, we see the guy's eyes start to open - he was not dead after all. We take another quick glance at the timer, then at him again, and back to Amanda.

We do not know if she noticed him waking up or if her hesitation was just out of disgust, but she finally gets the resolve to stab the body.

With every stab, blood sprinkles on her face and clothes as she lets out a shriek. Something is dying - not just her cellmate, but something inside her is being stabbed with just as much violence with every thrust of the knife.

We cut back to the station, as Dr. Gordon gets the explanation that the cellmate had been injected with an opioid overdose. Despite starting to wake up, he was unable to feel much of anything in his last moments. The realisation that Amanda had killed a man shocks the doctor.

Amanda is asked to remember what happened next. The images of her searching through his entrails to try to find the stomach flash in and out of reality and she both tries to remember and tries to avoid these traumatic - and disgusting - memories. The wet sound effects come to the rescue, making a visually disgusting scene all the more visceral. We then get a full shot of her getting the key from the stomach.

Now with the key in hand, Amanda struggles with all her might to find the padlock. Amidst the mechanical sounds of the timer, monstrous sounds are added - like someone running away from monsters, racing time is futile because it will always catch up. Amanda is almost out of time. At the last moment, she manages to unlock the padlock, remove the reverse bear trap, and throw it to the ground with all the force she can. It activates upon contact with a loud clang, as all the sounds stop, leaving only the echo of her last scream - one that was finally audible and that reverberates through the whole room.

Amanda cries. It's all over now. For a solid 10 seconds, all we see is a close up of Amanda's face while she cries, blood dripping from her mouth. She cannot wipe out tears because her hands are bloody, and so we get to see the agony in her face for a prolonged amount of time.

The crying only stops when Billy the Puppet cycles into the other end of the room. For a moment she's stunned - she does not know what Jigsaw will do to her, and she is in a particularly vulnerable state. Jigsaw, however, congratulates her.

"Congratulations. You are still alive. Most people are so ungrateful to be alive."

But not you. Not anymore.