It’s the rare long-running horror franchise that has never hit the new-coat-of-paint reboot button. The received wisdom is that, at some point, most every horror property older than two decades will need an update for new audiences while selectively wiping out inconvenient continuity. Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Exorcist essentially do it with each new film. Halloween every two or three movies. Nightmare on Elm St and Friday the 13th have done it. Hannibal is less franchise than collection of disparate auteurist takes on the same four novels. Chucky has mostly maintained its continuity, but even that franchise had to weather an ill-conceived remake.
And then there’s Saw.
Since 2004, the Saw franchise has transformed from James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s gnarly Sundance darling into horror’s most intricate soap opera. Characters ‘die’ in one film only to be revealed as having faked it in the next. Mysterious letters are delivered and three films later their contents will explain somebody’s strange behavior. Regular extensive flashbacks lend new context to years old scenes, revealing who was really involved just out of sight. The unexplained fate of a character in the first film becomes the basis of a twist in the seventh. Audiences might come to Saw for the horrifying deathtraps, but they stay for the dense mythology and plotting that Days of Our Lives would respect.
As the box office declined, Saw twice flirted with rebooting, but in both cases there’s a strong sense that the creatives knew a genuine reset was not going to be welcomed. As such, 2017’s Jigsaw tried very hard to be a fresh start without invalidating (or directly addressing) what came before and ended up pleasing nobody. 2021’s Spiral pitched itself as a copycat focused side story ‘From the Book of Saw,’ with little to link it to the old films apart from a couple of references. It presented somewhat as elevated horror thanks to its A-list stars and timely subject matter, but a Saw film that is embarrassed to be a Saw film is not endearing to those who love this franchise and doesn’t have much appeal to those who don’t.
Saw did not return to popular success until it returned to its most idiosyncratic impulses. 2023’s Saw X was essentially an extended flashback set between the first two films that largely exists to explain away a plot hole from Saw VI. Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith and Costas Mandylor returned to their roles, despite all looking twenty years older than they’re supposed to be given the timeline. It blew up at the box office and received the franchise’s highest Rotten Tomatoes score ever. A sequel was quickly announced and it looked very much like Saw had regained its crown by embracing to the storytelling mode that its most ardent fans had been begging for.
There are varying reports as to what happened next. But the outcome was the same; Saw XI stalled due, allegedly, to differing opinions on the best direction for it to next take. A franchise that had only just regained its status was stranded in limbo. And then came the announcement that horror juggernaut Blumhouse had acquired the property, returning it to the influence of creators James Wan and Leigh Whannell. It has since been made clear that they will be directly involved in whatever form Saw takes next.
Is this good news? It depends on who you ask. Wan and Whannell are horror royalty. Between them, they have launched several hugely popular franchises, directed billion-dollar hits, and crafted respected reimaginings of classic properties. There is a strong argument that, given they created the franchise and have only become bigger and better filmmakers since, there could not be a safer set of hands to restore Jigsaw to critical and commercial glory.
But here’s the tricky part – the Saw that most fans love, the Saw that the tenth film brought back to such acclaim, is not the Saw that Wan and Whannell created. In a candid interview surrounding the release of Spiral in 2021, Whannell openly admitted that to him there are two Saws – the low budget thriller he and Wan originally directed, and the blood spouting, convoluted franchise that followed. Yes, Wan and Whannell were involved in the writing of the second and third Saw films, but both left the franchise after that. Much of what makes Saw – not the original, but the franchise overall – so beloved came from those who picked their baton up and ran with it.
And this is what creates a unique question mark over the future of Saw. Because it’s very hard to imagine two of the most prominent and respected horror filmmakers around taking back their baton only to continue the same race so far from where they started it.
Of course, it’s too early to say with any confidence what a new Saw film would look like and how involved Wan and Whannell might be. They certainly don’t need Saw at this point in their careers and the strongest likelihood is that they’ll take ‘consultant’ roles similar to what James Cameron did on Terminator: Dark Fate. Then again, Wan’s statement refers to his ‘significant creative return’ and how it will come with a ‘fresh perspective’. Maybe twenty years away from Saw has given him a renewed passion for his first big break. Nobody could begrudge Wan and Whannell doing whatever the hell they want with it, even if that means a total restart or a more selective reboot akin to the 2018 Halloween.
If so, it would be hard not to feel like horror fans had lost something a bit special. No other franchise ever cared so much about its own minutiae and there was something so eccentric and charming about that. What was so unique about the Saw franchise in its heyday was that the filmmakers clearly knew the box office receipts were mostly thanks to casual gorehounds, yet still made the movies with attention to detail and canon that somehow elevated the bad acting, clunky dialogue and increasing outlandishness.
But then again, considered in a slightly different light, Saw X looks less like a restart and more like a victory lap, a last bow for the old type of Saw film. Given its chronological placement, it’s not like it set up some bold new direction or left audiences desperate to know what happens next. That question was answered twenty years ago. It’s doubtful that more interquel Saw movies trying to sell an eighty-something Tobin Bell as a man in his fifties would have been a particularly fruitful creative direction. Saw X was likely a gambit that could only be pulled off once. If its threads are not picked up on, then it served as a pretty perfect farewell for what the franchise once was.
As to what it will be next? Maybe reinvention is what Jigsaw needs. Maybe Wan and Whannell have some electric new take that will see Saw movies dominate the box office for years to come. Maybe that take will build on the old continuity and maybe it won’t. Given how fast these movies have historically been turned around, we’ll probably know soon enough. Whatever the case, the game is far from over.
