10 Horror Movies That Forced You To Answer Impossible Questions
5. Could You Cut Off Your Own Foot To Survive? - Saw
Though the filmmakers would love you to believe otherwise, there really aren't that many crushing dilemmas in the Saw franchise. But with its more restrained sense of simplicity compared to its sequels, the original film presents by far the most difficult question.
At the end of the film, a desperate Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes) decides to cut off his foot in order to escape Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) grotty bathroom.
We as audience members immediately identify with Gordon and ask ourselves, would we be capable of such a self-destructive act in the pursuit of our survival?
It's easy to say that you would, as pure survival instinct, cut your foot off to make your escape, but it's much, much harder to do in reality, especially successfully.
It's important to remember that Gordon was a medical doctor with an over-the-odds knowledge of where to cut his foot and how to wrap an effective tourniquet.
Even then, without medical assistance just about anybody would bleed out relatively quickly, so there's far more to consider than just the physical act of cutting your foot, which with the slim chances of survival would basically be suicide for most people.
But the alternative may well be rotting away in a bathroom until you die of thirst, so ultimately perishing from blood loss is probably the more merciful of the two choices.
Or, you could get creative like Detective Matthews (Donnie Wahlberg) in Saw III and smash your foot into an unrecognisable paste in order to slip it out of the shackle.
Either way, this is much easier said than done. It would require an awful amount of luck and grit to crawl your way to safety without succumbing to your injuries first, but dying of thirst is no more of a picnic.