10 Most Dishonest Editing Cuts In Film History

4. The Timeline Switcharoo - Saw II

After the first Saw film bamboozled audiences with mind-blowing plot twists and blatantly toyed with its own internal logic through editing, fans knew to keep their eyes peeled for the sequel.

Even so, few could've anticipated Saw II's climactic reveal, that the central game actually took place before the start of the movie, and Detective Matthews' (Donnie Wahlberg) kidnapped son Daniel (Erik Knudsen), who is seen partaking in the game via a pre-recorded video veed, is totally safe and sound.

Though this twist isn't easily guessed, the film doesn't really play fair with audiences either.

When Matthews first uncovers the video feed of the game in the first act, director Darren Lynn Bousman zooms in tight on the game unfolding on the video screen, and then almost immediately transitions to the very same scene unfolding within the movie's own cinematic continuity.

In terms of film language, this implies that the game is most definitely happening now, when of course, it ended some time before Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) was cornered by the cops in his warehouse at the start of the film.

The Saw movies thrive on convoluted storytelling, for sure, but this was the wrong kind of deceitful filmmaking.