10 More Awesome Plot Twists That Totally Saved Terrible Movies
8. Dr. Gordon Is Jigaw's Accomplice - Saw: The Final Chapter
There's a strong argument to be made that the seventh Saw movie, ill-advisedly dubbed "The Final Chapter," is the worst of the entire nine-movie series.
By this point in the franchise the Saw formula felt totally played out - the traps had lost their grimly imaginative sheen, the storytelling had reached a melodramatic critical mass, and even the twists weren't as daftly impactful as they once were.
But The Final Chapter was at least smart enough to pull the trigger on a long-held fan theory many had lost hope of ever coming true, that one of Jigsaw's (Tobin Bell) victims from the original movie, Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes), would be revealed as one of his accomplices.
Gordon famously went missing at the end of the first film after sawing off his foot and escaping Jigsaw's grotty bathroom, with fans speculating about his fate ever since.
The Final Chapter brought Gordon back into the fold by having him appear at a Jigsaw survivors support group, and at film's end we learn that he had actually been nursed back to health by Jigsaw and installed as a secret accomplice.
His mission? To take down the new Jigsaw, Detective Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), in the event that anything happened to Jigsaw's ex-wife Jill (Betsy Russell). After Jill was killed by Hoffman, Gordon sprang into action.
And so, the movie ends with Gordon kidnapping Hoffman and locking him away in Jigsaw's bathroom, leaving him to die with the satisfyingly circuitous one-liner, "Game over."
The twist is completely silly and came at least a few movies too late, but for fans who hung in their for years waiting for Gordon's fate to be resolved, it certainly felt like a fist-pumping reward. It's just a shame the series didn't end there.