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Reliving A Dangerous Game: Remembering The Saw Franchise’s Best Traps

Can you believe it's already been ten years since James Wan kickstarted one of the most successful horror franchises in genre history? While the Saw movies have gone on to rake in millions and millions of festive Halloween dollars, manned by numerous writer/director teams, it all started when Wan and his creative cohort Leigh Whannell created a horror movie with a better twist than M. Night Shyamalan has ever achieved. After blowing horror audiences away, Lionsgate Entertainment and Twisted Pictures realized the moneymaking potential behind future Saw movies, resulting in an October movie-going ritual that saw seven franchise films in total.

6) Saw: The Barbed Wire Crawl

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Going back to James Wan’s original Saw, it’s Jigsaw’s barbed wire maze that nails everything that makes his traps so unsettling. With a timer counting down, a man is forced to craw on his hands and knees through razor wire before a door locks and entombs him. Completely unclothed, the man finds himself being torn apart with every lunge forward, and the violent nature of Jigsaw’s trap is highlighted when one of the investigating cops notices pieces of flesh still caught on the barbed wire.

I guess there’s something about tearing flesh that really unsettles me, going along with my previous selection. While the original Saw certainly doesn’t have the upped technical prowess some of the future Saw films do, I think that’s what makes this simple trap entirely more terrifying. There’s no mechanical component besides a self-locking door, as the victim is simply forced to crawl through a thick bush of tiny, sharp daggers. My skin is crawling just thinking of the act, being torn from all directions, bleeding from a whole host of cuts covering my body. Nope, no thank you!