20 Things You Didn't Know About Saw
What traps didn't make it into the film?
Nobody expected a lot from Saw. The director, James Wan, only made one movie, Stygian, which... let's be honest, you never heard of it. At the time, Saw seemed like it was going to be just another schlocky B-movie horror flick.
But audience members fell in love with Saw due to its fascinating premise, terrifying scenes, mesmerising soundtrack, fluid editing, mind-blowing twist, and one of the most intriguing villains in recent horror. The movie is so haunting, it made a whole generation terrified of vaudeville puppets. (That takes real skill.)
The film made nearly a hundred times its budget, guaranteeing it would become the new horror franchise. Despite inspiring seven sequels, the first film is considered to be the best by far.
How the original Saw came to be is just as fascinating as the film itself. What was it inspired by? How different could it have turned out? Have you heard some of the crazy fan-theories viewers have made about the franchise?
And with that out of the way, let's have a look at the 2004 horror masterpiece. (It goes without saying that this article will contain many, many, many spoilers.)
20. The Story Nearly Had Astral Projection
When director, James Wan, and writer, Leigh Whannell, agreed to make a film together, they pitched a lot of different ideas. In the end, they boiled it down to three plot lines. Before they decided to make a movie about a serial-killer, they considered a story revolving around a man who could, much like Doctor Strange, project his consciousness out of his body. Wan abandoned this idea, stating, "We weren’t quite sure if that was going to be cool enough to be our breakthrough film".
The second plot was about a man who woke up in the morning to find scratches all over his body. He doesn't know if he is doing it himself or if another force is attacking him. To learn the truth, he sets up security cameras to film him during the night. Wan and Whannell devised this idea many years before the release of Paranormal Activity, which has a similar story and structure.
Ironically, Paranormal Activity was the first film to beat a Saw film at the box office. In fact, the developers made Saw 3D the last in the series (for a while) because they felt like the franchise couldn't compete with Paranormal Activity.