Every Saw Movie Ranked: From Franchise Lows to Twist-Packed Highs

Blumhouse is taking the helm of Saw, so we rewind the gore and stack the first ten films from the dullest cut to the deadliest.

Saw is the franchise that refuses to tap out. Some horror fans swear by it, others call it straight-up torture porn, but audiences keep showing up. Case in point: Saw X crossed $100 million worldwide and pulled the best reviews since the first movie. So, where do the ten films land now that the dust (and pig guts) have settled? Here’s how I rank them, from bottom of the barrel to best in show.

1. Saw 3D (2010)
   Billed as the 'Final Chapter' and shot in 3D to fling as many gnarly traps at your face as possible, this one had chaos baked in. Kevin Greutert (who did Saw VI) stepped in just two weeks before filming after David Hackl exited. The result feels exactly like a movie made under those circumstances: scattered and clumsy. Bringing back Cary Elwes as Dr. Gordon was a smart swing, but the execution is rough. The subplot about a guy pretending to be a Jigsaw survivor goes nowhere, and the long, long Mark Hoffman saga limps to an underwhelming finish.

2. Jigsaw (2017)
   After a seven-year breather and a new team (the Spierig brothers directing), you’d hope for a jolt. Instead, it leans on the same old tricks: timeline games, heavy flashbacks, bland victims, and surprise apprentices. It ignores dangling threads from Saw 3D to introduce yet another follower nobody mentioned before. The most distinctive thing here isn’t a character or twist — it’s the laser trap.

3. Saw V (2008)
   We know Hoffman is Jigsaw’s apprentice, and FBI agent Peter Strahm is closing in. Their cat-and-mouse across dim corridors is the real focus, leaving the group of five people slogging through tests feeling like background noise. David Hackl (a veteran production designer/second unit director on the series) delivers one standout beat — Strahm giving himself a pen tracheotomy to survive a water trap — but most of it plays like a tired rerun. The annual sequel grind was showing.

4. Saw IV (2007)
   Darren Lynn Bousman stuck around to direct, but a new writing team had to answer the big question: how do you keep Saw going when Jigsaw and Amanda are dead? Answer: find a new apprentice, and then stuff in surprises like Donnie Wahlberg’s Eric Matthews still being alive six months later. We also get a deeper dive into Jigsaw’s past — not just the cancer and car crash/failed suicide attempt, but a tragic romance and a lost child — pushing the series into full-on bloody melodrama territory. Some fans live for that.

5. Saw III (2006)
   This is where James Wan and Leigh Whannell bow out creatively (they’re still credited on later films, but this is their last hands-on entry), and they go for the jugular. It’s the meanest, nastiest Saw, even reportedly grossing out Whannell. The rotten pig carcass sequence is… a lot. While a kidnapped surgeon is forced to operate on a dying Jigsaw under Amanda’s watch, a grieving father (Angus Macfadyen) has to decide whether the people tied to his son’s death — the drunk driver, a witness who stayed quiet, a judge who went easy — live or die. It’s interesting, but it’s a bleak sit.

6. Saw VI (2009)
   Mark Hoffman just isn’t a compelling big bad, and watching him wriggle out of danger again and again gets old. That said, Kevin Greutert (editing veteran turned director) injects some momentum and a nasty edge with the inspired choice of centering the game on a health insurance executive from Jigsaw’s past. There are still too many retroactive flashbacks trying to patch holes left by Saw III, but overall this is a step up — even if audiences had largely checked out by then, making it the weakest earner up to that point.

7. Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
   Bousman returns for a copycat killer story that mostly ignores franchise continuity, which turns out to be a relief. Chris Rock plays a detective hunting someone targeting dirty cops with elaborate traps; he’s best when he’s wisecracking, less so when he tries to scowl the walls down. Samuel L. Jackson shows up as his dad and, yes, ends up in a rig — and it’s undeniably fun seeing SLJ in a Saw contraption. It’s a straightforward revenge thriller with Saw trappings, and after years of lore bloat, that simplicity works.

8. Saw X (2023)
   I usually glaze over when these movies drown in flashbacks and calendar gymnastics, which is why it’s wild that a prequel wedged between Saw and Saw II lands this well. John Kramer takes center stage after getting hustled by a phony medical outfit, and he responds by doing what he does best: games. Anchoring the film to Kramer’s point of view gives it focus and bite, and it’s the first time I’ve cared about him as a character instead of just a lecture machine. Bonus: it cracked $100 million worldwide and pulled the strongest reviews since the original.

9. Saw II (2005)
   The first sequel does what sequels do: it goes bigger. Instead of two guys in a bathroom, we get seven people trapped in a booby-trapped house, dosed with nerve gas and forced to collect antidotes hidden in various games. Meanwhile, detective Eric Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) thinks he’s bagged the Jigsaw Killer, only to realize Kramer is still steering the ship. The syringe pit alone is a hall-of-fame cringe, but the movie keeps a nasty-fun energy the later entries often lose.

10. Saw (2004)
    Before the mythology exploded, this started as a scrappy, high-concept thriller: two men, a locked room, chains on their ankles, hacksaws within reach. Wan and Whannell built a labyrinth around that idea — a killer who makes people play for their lives, a mother and daughter held at gunpoint, an obsessed cop chasing the wrong lead, a survivor who’s unsettlingly grateful — and then detonated a twist ending that instantly put it on the map. Even if the sequels never happened, this would still be a modern genre classic.

That’s my lineup. Your turn: how would you rank them?