10 Movie Idiots Who Made Simple Solutions Look IMPOSSIBLE

Saw is now one of the biggest horror franchises in the world, depicting absolute nightmare scenarios of kidnap, torture, and self-mutilation. Very icky. But the morbid curiosity its audience to see the Jigsaw Killer enact his own twisted justice on those he perceives to be in want of punishment has proved to be a successful formula.

It’s easy to forget how low budget or low concept Jigsaw’s original traps were. Since the first instalment, we’ve seen keys surgically implanted in eyes, motorcycle blenders, and shotgun collars. Yet Saw’s bathroom trap was super basic. Just a couple of guys chained to the wall in a dingy bathroom somewhere. There’s only a bathtub, some hacksaws and guns, and an already dead body. Their instructions are simple: Dr Lawrence must kill his companion Adam or else his wife and daughter will be killed, and Adam must escape – I assume without being murdered in the process.

Unfortunately, with such limited tools at their disposal, the opportunity for idiocy somehow increases. The denouement of the movie features an absolute mess of problem-solving from Cary Elwes’ Dr Lawrence Gordon. After he discovers a one-way mobile phone in the bathroom, it’s obvious that this, the only potential contact they have with the outside world, is absolutely invaluable. I don’t blame Gordon for being so desperate to answer it when it starts ringing – especially since it turns out to be phone call from his distressed daughter.

Yeeting the phone across the room when he hears the alarming commotion of gunshots and screaming, however, is not the one. Maybe the stress of the situation gets to him, or maybe he’s delirious from the kidnapping, but the doctor’s immediate reaction to his mobile falling out of reach is to – you guessed it – hack off his own foot to escape the chains and reach the phone. VERY icky.

One question remains: why didn’t he just… use… the saw… to reach the phone? At the very least, we’ve all done the lasso trick to reach a charging phone from bed without wanting to physically get up – so I’m pretty sure he could’ve worked something similar out with that shirt he so heroically ripped off to serve as a tourniquet for his self-amputation. Super gross, super horrific, and ultimately, super stupid. He probably would have ended up having to saw off the appendage eventually, or else be killed in some other horrific fashion. At least this way, he does actually make it out alive, albeit one foot down.