10 Great Movies With "Rotten" Scores On Rotten Tomatoes

The first in the grisly Jigsaw franchise has a Rotten score of 49%.

Saw and its myriad sequels are the films most closely associated in the mainstream media with the infamous term ‘torture porn’. Upon its release in 2004 audiences were shocked by the sadistic nature of its premise, where extreme violence and cruel choices are part of some nightmarish game.

But it was nonetheless a hit (hence its many, many sequels), thanks in part to its unique premise and nasty traps capturing the sick imaginations of horror viewers everywhere. This same nastiness also put off a lot of critics, branding it “sick”, “cruel”, and “demented”.

What people forget about the first Saw film in particular is that it’s a detective thriller as much as it is a horror film, with officers racing against time to investigate the Jigsaw killer and trying to put a stop to his twisted game. Throw in a couple of unexpected twists and Saw certainly merits a far kinder reputation than being labelled as merely a “gore-fest”.

Compared to Hostel, wherein torture basically exists to repulse (and, worryingly, titillate), at least Saw tries to justify its violence by giving its perpetrator a motivation besides “Torture is fun”.

If you can stomach it, Saw is a heart-pounding and deviously clever piece of work which is truly a modern horror classic.