Game Over: Spiral and the Legacy of the Saw Ending

Spoilers ahead for all the Saw movies, including Spiral.

I. Introduction

I rented the first Saw on DVD sometime in 2005 from my local Hastings Video Store (RIP). It was right around the release of the first sequel; I didn’t know what to expect with the original because, since the start, the Saw series has always held the baggage of being bad and distasteful horror films. Well, no surprise, I was instantly hooked. From the gore effects to the over-the-top acting (Cary Elwes is certainly going for the fences and I applaud him for it), to the ever-present grime on every frame that doesn’t look like it’ll ever wash away, and that cacophonous  score(!!), all of it won me over. Revisiting the first film and subsequent sequels now makes me think this franchise—in the early run for sure—errs more on the side of avant-garde than the sensationalized "torture porn" label it’s been stuck with. What sets it apart are its ending, an important staple of the series. You want to make a Saw movie? Well, it better have one hell of an ending. The new film Spiral does prove itself a worthy Saw entry because it recognizes and respects a lot of what makes this series work so well 17 years on—and one thing it gets right is that ending. In looking at Spiral’s ending, I take a look back at how every Saw film before it ends, and how they stack up to that original’s still-perfect finale.  

II. Saw 

The ending of 2004’s Saw is still manages to surprise—the reveal of the killer, how exactly he's revealed, the final lines of dialogue, that smash cut to black, all scored by that iconic theme by Charlie Clouser, it all still hits hard. It’s a confluence of elements that tumble together with enough brute force that it works, thanks to James Wan’s direction and Leigh Whannell‘s script. Eight sequels later and there’s still no topping it. 

Early in the film you hear the killer Jigsaw before you see him—his voice tape-recorded, giving his victims a choice on whether to live or die in their personalized traps. The film misdirects you, making you think the weirdo Zep (Michael Emerson) is behind the murders, locking Dr. Gordon (Elwes) and Adam (Leigh Whannell) in a hellish makeshift dungeon with a dead body on the floor with them as part of a game. But no, of course he’s not the killer. It’s revealed he’s a pawn like everyone else, and then the film reaches its denouement. Chained to rusty pipes, Gordon takes the hand saw that was sinisterly placed inside the room for him and hacks his own foot off. Dismemberment and howls of pain follow, and as soon as Gordon is free of one foot he crawls out of the room, assuring the still-chained Adam he’ll get help. 

The thought-to-be-dead body at the center of the room starts to move as the pieces all fall in place and Adam comes to the realization he’s truly fucked. Clouser’s music swells (“Hello Zepp”) and John Kramer (franchise MVP Tobin Bell), a cancer patient shown ever so briefly earlier in the film, is that “dead” body, stands above Adam and says “Game over.” Adam reaches out, screaming in disbelief and horror. Lights out, door closes, roll credits. Again, there’s nothing topping it. 

Saw is a lesser movie without its ending, but not a bad one. It shows its age and budget, made for super cheap by first-time director Wan. The low budget aesthetic works in its favor though, playfully teetering on the expressive and the grounded. The kills still hold strong, clearly influenced by David Fincher’s Seven. And Wan adds his own touches—just look at how he shoots high-speed chases, which feel like they’re shot in a garage but are still kinetic and tense. Whatever issues you have with the film wash away as soon as the film cuts to black. You’ve just been sent to hell, and the film has no intention of bringing you back. 

III. Saw II

The sequels try their best to surpass Saw’s ending. Some come close. Saw II has some of the best traps in the series, and it introduces the second best character of the franchise, Shawnee Smith as Amanda. Its ending is twisty and powerful enough to rank right up there with the best Saw endings. It plays with time and introduces the series’ most unreliable narrator: the film editor. Detective Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) thinks he has Jigsaw dead to rights, leading a SWAT team into the killer’s lair and putting him in custody. Jigsaw then reveals Matthews is his next target; monitors in another room show a game being played, a literal house of horrors filled with traps with eight victims fighting their way out, and one of those eight is Matthews’ son. Over the course of the film we jump back and forth between the house and Matthews growing increasingly desperate with Jigsaw and his unwillingness to tell him his son’s location. Jigsaw only asks one thing: for Matthews to sit and talk. Of course, no victim of Jigsaw’s follows the rules—Matthews forcibly makes Jigsaw take him to the house. It’s too bad he didn’t hang around a bit longer. Turns out the monitors showing us the events taking place in the house weren’t live but pre-taped from days ago. Matthews’ son is safe and sound back at Jigsaw’s lair. And that’s the first twist!  

Like many films in this franchise, you shouldn’t believe everything you see at face value. Amanda, a survivor of Jigsaw’s traps from the first film, is one of the eight victims in the trap house. She ends up being one of one of two survivors, the other Matthew’s son, making her way back in the godforsaken room at the center of the first Saw. That’s where Matthews ends up on his search for his son, and that’s where it’s revealed Amanda wasn’t a victim at all, she’s an apprentice to Jigsaw—the first of several in the series. Mirroring the end of the last film, there’s one last scream, this time from Matthews now chained up, as Amanda turns off the lights and slams the door. Roll credits. 

It’s a shame Amanda wasn’t a bigger part of the series. She’s already in four films and the ending of Saw II held a promise of a new type of villain we don’t normally see. Saw II is something of a special case, the apprentice reveal is fresh, and as far as cliffhangers go, this one promises a lot. Thankfully we have Saw III with Amanda as a major player. But it doesn’t last long.  

IV. Saw III

The third film’s ending isn’t quite as satisfyingly twisty as the last two—most likely by design—but it’s still one hell of a punch. The first, and really only, twist involves the two main players of Jigsaw and Amanda’s game. Jeff (Angus Macfadyen) goes through a series of traps, all involving the hit-and-run death of his son—he’s a man who is blood thirsty for revenge. Meanwhile, Jigsaw’s health is on the decline, so he enlists (kidnaps) a doctor, Lynn (Bahar Soomekh), to help slow his eventual slip into death from cancer. Amanda is also part of the game, battling her own need for blood. But that’s the thing about Jigsaw, he’s not a murderer, so he says. Jeff and Lynn’s paths cross as Jeff walks into the operating room Jigsaw, Amanda, and Lynn are all in—surprise, it was all taking place in the same big warehouse (it’s a very big warehouse). And, it turns out, Jeff and Lynn are an estranged married couple, now in the final phase of Jigsaw’s game. The shotgun collar around Lynn’s neck is set to blow as soon as Jigsaw’s heart stops, but that’s a bit of information Jeff isn’t privy to, because he barely hesitates to slice Jigsaw’s throat open. 

It was pretty bold to kill the franchise’s main villain while the series was at its most popular (Saw III remains the biggest weekend opener of the series). Not only that, the finale also sees the death of Amanda, shot by Jeff, whose thirst to kill matches Amanda’s—she has a too brief character arc, only really paying off in Saw VI. The music cue and fast cuts are all here, and instead revealing something unexpected, it does the unexpected—the brutal, bloody death of Jigsaw and the aftermath of the gruesome shotgun collar kill. I don’t know how much is actually shown in the theatrical cut, but the unrated cut really does linger on the shotgunned head, or lack thereof, of Lynn. Truly shocking. 

More so than before, Saw III lays the groundwork for the next film(s) in the franchise, dropping not so subtle hints of future killers lurking in the shadows. Director Darren Lynn Bousman was at the helm for the most interesting stretch of Saw movies here, directing II, III, and IV. The last one he directed, Saw IV, before coming back for Spiral, feels like a grand finale of sorts. 

V. Saw IV

For the entirety of Saw IV we follow Officer Rigg (Lyriq Bent) as he’s sent on a scavenger hunt of Jigsaw traps throughout the city. Detectives and federal agents are one step behind him, thinking he’s another Jigsaw apprentice. It all comes to a head in the final trap: the ice block, electric chair seesaw. Another great thing about the series at this point, and up until the eighth film Jigsaw, is how canonically dedicated the series is to itself. Saw IV’s ending only really makes sense if you’ve seen Saw III and have some awareness of the key players of the entire franchise up to that point. While the first three Saw endings each dealt with timeline trickery and the importance of geographical location, Saw IV sees these ideas come together as the events of the end of Saw III play out alongside the end of Saw IV. The first big reveal is that the Saw IV timeline we assumed was happening after Saw III is actually taking place concurrently. Twist! 

In the film’s final moments, Agent Strahm (Scott Patterson) walks into the final shootout at the end of Saw III and kills Jeff after letting the carnage play out leaving Lynn, Amanda, and Jigsaw all dead. In another room, Officer Rigg steps into a trap that sees Detective Matthews (remember him from Saw II?), barely alive, and Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) tied to the melting ice contraption that will either hang Matthews or electrocute Hoffman. After a shootout leaving Rigg bleeding out, Matthews mercifully finally meets his end in a gnarly kill when two ice blocks collide together to smash his head into a blizzard mush—an outstanding kill. 

Hoffman rises from the trap, revealing he’s another Jigsaw apprentice. A cop lurking in the background of the last two films, he’s now the main living villain of the next three films (woof). In true Saw ending fashion, Hoffman seals Strahm in the room littered with corpses; lights off, cut to black, roll credits. There’s so much happening at the end of Saw IV that it’s hard to piece things together if you’re going in cold. But it works so well because it reaches for the preposterous and nails it. To truly enjoy its beauty you’d have to be a die-hard fan at this point, one willing to marathon four Saw films in one night on the weekend of Saw IV’s release… I’m being very specific because, yes, this is what I did in 2007, and yes, the ending of IV really benefits from knowing, to heart, the first three, that’s why it might be the series’ second best ending, only behind the original. 

VI. Saw V

And then we get to the unfortunate Saw V. We follow Strahm, who survived a “Jigsaw'' trap early in the film, as he’s dead-set on proving Hoffman is the new Jigsaw. Meanwhile, five victims play a Saw II-type long game, and in the end… Nothing is revealed. The A and B storylines never converge into something satisfying. What is there to say about a Saw ending that doesn’t feel like a Saw ending? Maybe it’s because director Bousman left the series, or maybe it’s because the franchise is acknowledging that killing off its two most interesting villains was a mistake, but Hoffman as the New Jigsaw in Saw V just doesn’t work. The “big reveal” of Saw V sees Strahm falling into a final trap Hoffman sets for him. It’s a pretty cool kill—Straham gets crushed by a Star Wars-type trash compactor, two walls turning him into goop, as Hoffman watches from a glass box underneath. It’s not that I don’t mind the villain getting away, every Saw movie’s ending sees the villain either get away or accomplish what they set out to do, it’s just that Hoffman and Saw V bring nothing new to the table, especially after the layers of blood and ice from IV. It’s no surprise that not only is Saw V’s ending the weakest of the bunch, the film itself is the bottom rung of the franchise, too. 

VII. Saw VI

I must confess that it was after Saw V that I jumped ship. I didn’t see any other Saw films in theaters after that, only just catching a few years ago. It’s something I now regret because Saw VI and Saw 3D improve vastly on Saw V. Saw VI is especially worthwhile because it sees the return of Shawnee Smith as Amanda, via flashbacks of course. Throughout the franchise we’ve seen Tobin Bell as Jigsaw in flashbacks and on tape recordings, even dead he has a presence. Seeing Amanda back in the Saw franchise, alongside Bell,  feels especially good, considering she’s pivotal to the Saw canon and it's a reminder of what could’ve been. Imagine how amazing it would’ve been if it was Amanda who was still alive, carrying out Jigsaw’s mission rather than Hoffman. Saw VI works because it’s not just Hoffman carrying the villain load, he’s another pawn in the game. 

Saw VI is a great late entry Saw movie because it sets its sights on a worthy target: medical insurance companies. It might be the most cathartic of Saw endings. The main player of the game is an insurance executive, William (Peter Outerbridge), who reaches the end of the large trap set up by Hoffman, as envisioned by Jigsaw. Instead of reuniting with who we think is his wife and son, he comes face to face with a widow and the son of a man who was turned down for medical coverage leading to his death. The son throws a switch, sealing William’s fate, injecting him with dozens of needles filled with hydrofluoric acid effectively melting/killing him (so few kills are as effective as this one, from the emotional payoff to the gore). Meanwhile, Jigsaw’s ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell), is set to complete Jigsaw’s plan, and puts Hoffman in the classic Reverse Bear Trap, a nod to Amanda’s trap in the first Saw. Hoffman was warned he was far from done from playing in Jigsaw’s game, and this is the fulfillment of that promise. Of course, Hoffman escapes before the trap can rip his head off, but the final frames we see is of Hoffman screaming in pain as he rips the machine off his face, tearing his cheek open.  

That final moment, with Hoffman almost dying at the hands of Dead Jigsaw’s trap, is the best moment Hoffman has in the series. The apparent, and alive, New Jigsaw has been ducking and dodging suspicion for the last three films, flying high on bending the Dead Jigsaw’s rules of “no murdering.” But, even beyond the grave, Dead Jigsaw has the power to get that close to Hoffman, and it was a shame the film didn’t commit to killing Hoffman because the next and “final” chapter doesn’t benefit much from him sticking around. 

VIII. Saw 3D

Saw 3D aka Saw: The Final Chapter has its problems, sure. Originally envisioned as two films, the studio decided the filmmakers only had one film to wrap everything up and end the franchise. What we have here is a sweaty dart across the finish line. The film barely works and what I like about it are the sprinkles of ideas therein. In the end we see Hoffman once again pull one over on everyone, he accomplishes his goal of killing Jill and seemingly gets away with it all, until he’s captured by people dressed in pig-face Jigsaw attire. It’s revealed that Dr. Gordon is another Jigsaw apprentice, working behind the scenes on various traps since the start. He leaves Hoffman, someone who’s strayed too far from Jigsaw’s light, to die in the same dingy room the series started in. He closes the door, music swells, cut to black, roll credits. 

Okay, this won’t be the last time we see more Jigsaw apprentices revealed, but it’s for sure the most interesting reveal to make this late in the game, mostly because of the implications it brings up. In Saw II we were introduced to Amanda, a Jigsaw trap survivor who went on to be his acolyte. In Saw 3D we’re introduced to a Jigsaw survivors support group, attended by Dr. Gordon. Are we to believe there’s now a cult of Jigsaw running around setting traps for those needing to be “saved”? This is something Saw 3D brings up but doesn’t answer because it’s two stories shoved into one 90-minute film. And since the franchise abandons this cult angle led by Gordon in the next two films, we’re only left with another “what if?” They can still make a Cult of Jigsaw film, but more on that later. 

IX. Jigsaw

The ending of Jigsaw, the 2017 first attempt at reviving the series, is yet another Jigsaw apprentice reveal. Separated mostly from the main canon of the first seven films, there’s some freshness to the ending, but it doesn’t have the same impact as before. Dropping the cult angle, Jigsaw instead goes for “online admirers” of the dead Jigsaw, an intriguing premise that’s never fully developed. Logan’s (Matt Passmore) reveal as the real killer in Jigsaw isn’t shocking, not as much as the movie thinks anyway. What is shocking is the reveal that the five person trap we’ve been watching alongside the hunt for the New New Jigsaw turns out to be a flashback from ten years ago—an ending cribbed from the book of Saw II. Tobin Bell, in the Jigsaw robe, walks into the final stage of the game and gives the two remaining victims their final game. For the briefest of seconds you almost believe Jigsaw is back, resurrected somehow, flesh and bone. But that’s not the case, and the series continues here to not cross that supernatural line that other horror series tend to find themselves in. I mean, it wouldn’t be a bad thing—Jason Goes To Hell is pretty badass—but still, that’s not this franchise. And the fact that the new Jigsaw “remakes” the old trap here is a nice meta nod to a franchise rebuilding itself. 

Jigsaw does have one of the best deaths in the franchise, and it saves it for the finale. And here is where I think the screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, both of which also wrote Spiral, understand Saw endings. It’s not just the reveals that do the trick, it’s one last twist of the knife before the end credits that also helps. Logan puts a crooked cop (Callum Keith Rennie) in a laser collar and, for breaking the rules of the game, the cop’s head gets sliced like a bloomin’ onion. For a purely digital effect it’s shockingly gag-inducing and effective. Jigsaw didn’t light the world on fire as much as the studio wanted, it’s a decent attempt but it’s hard to get back to the greatness of the early films, and it was time for yet another soft reboot. 

X. Spiral: From the Book of Saw

Spiral: From the Book of Saw is an odd entry in the franchise. Recently, it’s been made clear by director Bousman, coming back after IV, that Spiral isn’t Saw IX, and that there could very well be a Saw IX in the future. Canonically, it’s the most separated from the films that preceded it; first off, there’s no Tobin Bell as Jigsaw, which is a huge mark against it. Like the killer in the film being inspired by the original Jigsaw, this is more inspired by the Saw films than a direct continuation. 

Starring and coming from an initial pitch by Chris Rock, Spiral does enough in terms of surprises and setting the mood in the trap department to bring it to an appropriate Saw level. The one glaring aspect of the film I can’t look past is just how out of his depth Rock’s Detective Banks is; not only is he quoted as saying “Jigsaw never targeted cops” (wrong), he also falls for the ol’ “let me borrow your cell phone” trick. It’s in the constraint of the screenplay that Banks comes off as a cop who makes one mistake after another, being pulled forward clue by clue, before finally falling into the killer’s final trap. He’s not as inept as other cops in the series (remember those cops in Saw 3D?), but it’s hard to look past. It’s ultimately forgivable because what stands out is what Spiral has to say about cops who break the rules they’re sworn to protect—they deserve to be Jigsaw’d. 

Like the medical insurance angle in Saw VI, Spiral takes aim at police corruption and brutality. It’s a more pointed attack than past movies. As early as the first Saw, the original Jigsaw was targeting cops—Danny Glover’s cop character falls into Jigsaw’s trap not once but twice. And in Saw II, Jigsaw’s grand scheme revolves around Donnie Wahlberg’s Detective Matthews. But in Spiral, the copycat killer takes on an entire police force for dereliction of duty, curbside point-blank murder, cover-ups, and, finally, for allowing and pushing this excess force to happen—beat cops, detectives, and chiefs of the department all fall victim.  

The ending of Spiral, I feel, is one that won’t sit well with many loyal Saw fans. There are definitely things to dislike—the killer reveal is the weakest since Hoffman’s in IV, an obvious we-totally-saw-that-coming. Always one step behind the killer, Detective Banks’ partner turns out to be the killer. It should have been pretty obvious when his partner “dies”—in a clear deviation from the rules of Jigsaw and the series itself, Max Minghella’s Detective Schenk supposedly gets flayed by the killer, and we don’t know exactly why. Banks doesn’t seem to dig into it either, leaving the scene of the crime before doing some legwork that can solve the case. So when Banks enters the warehouse where the last trap is set, we see Schenk waiting—it’s anti-climatic. This isn’t the typical Saw ending… not yet. 

Finally, when Clouser’s music starts to swell—it should be noted that Clouser has scored every single film in the franchise, a gift—we see Banks’ father, ex-chief of police Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson) hanging like a marionette from the ceiling, bleeding out into jars on the floor. Schenk gives Banks one last choice, either let Schenk go and save his father by triggering him lose, or kill Schenk and let his father bleed to death. Then the reveal happens—Banks was ostracized from the department for not taking part in the crooked dealings that have gone on for years, including turning in a cop who killed an innocent man. That murder was part of an initiative to clean up the streets ok’d by then-chief Marcus. That innocent man had a son, Schenk, who now sets out to kill all the crooked cops in the department.

It seems like Marcus is saved as Banks hits the trigger releasing him, and then Banks goes for Schenk. That’s when a SWAT team comes in, snapping a cable that strings Marcus back up and puppets him, lifting his arm up, pointing a gun that was placed up his sleeve now visible, right at the cops. The cops don’t hesitate to shoot and kill Marcus. Banks screams in agony, witnessing the death of his father, as he turns and reaches for Schenk, Schenk escapes by way of freight elevator, slams the door, cut to black. Roll credits. One dead father deserves another.  

The ending of Spiral is less evocative and more of a down right statement: the final victim is an unarmed innocent black man killed by cops. Although the term “innocent” is loose here—the ex-chief was responsible for covering-up and carrying out orders that led to innocent deaths and further corruption. Like almost every victim of Jigsaw’s, he had it coming, but the imagery is still haunting. Add to that the new killer’s addition to Jigsaw’s motif, a pig puppet dressed as a cop hanging on strings, which flashes on screen, mirroring imagery, as the final gunshots ring out killing Marcus on strings. It’s nowhere near at the top of the franchise’s best endings, but there’s enough there to absolutely call it worthy of the Saw moniker. By the end, you’re shaken. 

XI. End

I miss having Saw films as an event every October. For those first seven years (or the first five when I was locked in as a die-hard fan) I could depend on a new Saw to throw me for a loop. The series tossed more and more heaps of canon on top of each other, like a Jenga tower on the verge of toppling over, and with each ending came more questions than answers. That’s how I feel about Spiral, like other Saw endings we see a helpless survivor screaming out as the killer gets away. In traditional Saw fashion the next logical step would be to either pick up Spiral 2 right where we left off, or start another story in that same world and then wrap around to the end of the first Spiral. Like the ends of Saw III and Saw IV, imagine who else could be in traps in that same warehouse. My mind wonders, what happens right after Schenk closed that door on that elevator, and where exactly does that elevator lead to?

Or, now here’s my pitch as a devotee to the series, imagine a Cult of Jigsaw movie where all the remaining Jigsaw apprentices come back, hell, even put in the Spiral copycat in there, too. Like any fan, I want more. The series’ future, as of this writing, is unknown—I’m no box office expert, and in this time of uncertainty for a lot of Hollywood productions, I couldn’t tell you with confidence if a Saw sequel of any kind is a guarantee. But the one thing, for sure, that Spiral succeeds in doing is getting me passionate once again for Saw, its endings and its future. And in getting me to listen to “Hello Zepp” for the 100th time.