The Saw franchise became a landmark in the history of popular horror movies but which entries fared the best with critics?
The Saw horror franchise ruled the coveted Halloween box office rankings for five consecutive years before being inevitably dethroned by the cheaper and newer Paranormal Activity series and during its still ongoing run it's had its fair share of iconic genre moments as well accumulating a very large and passionate fanbase of its very own.
Each fan has their own ranking of the movies so far but which are the best according to critics? Let's look at each movie and its score on Metacritic to better understand the franchise's progression in the public eye.
The final Saw movie to dominate the Halloween box office tallies is the lowest-rated amongst critics and one of the lowest-rated amongst fans, which is perhaps one of the biggest contributing factors to its downfall.
With the main killer, Jigsaw, dead for some time now, the plot began to become increasingly convoluted in order to keep the core premise intact and a lack of memorable kills helped to alienate the few defenders that the series had left.
Billed as the final Saw movie, which it technically is despite the franchise continuing under different titles, Saw 3D (which is the seventh movie in the series and not the third, as is typical of the 3D moniker/trope) pulled out all the stops to give Paranormal Activity 2 a run for its money at the Halloween box office and, even though the latter movie was still the bigger success on a much smaller budget, it was one of the highest-grossing movies of the series.
Despite this and a number of returning faces for the franchise, however, the movie isn't very highly-rated with either critics or fans.
Rekindling some of the minor critical acclaim–or leniency–shown towards the franchise, Saw VI adopted a story with a small amount of commentary on for-profit healthcare in the United States.
The theme was fitting considering the main killer's origins in gruesome life lessons but it failed to make the sequel any more of a thought-provoking experience for the vast majority of critics who saw much of the same as usual in the sixth movie.
Attempting to find a path forward for the franchise following the death of Jigsaw at the end of Saw III, the fourth movie began to lose what little semblance of morality or meaning there was within the story (which was mostly only surface-level to begin with) and the series began to focus on simply pulling the rug out from beneath the audience by any means necessary.
Whilst critics appeared almost entirely fed up with the franchise by this point, audiences were still making the movies a success at the box office even though a sharp decline seemed inevitable.
Reinvigorating the franchise, Jigsaw acts as a straight sequel to the events of the Saw movies and incorporated a number of the franchise's typical time tricks to work around the fact that its main killer had been deceased within the franchise's own continuity for over a decade.
Though still not a hit with critics, the series was able to recapture some of its former box office glory with the eighth installment and greenlight another sequel, Spiral, set for a 2021 release.
The first of the Saw movies to be directed by franchise mainstay Darren Lynn Bousman who also co-wrote the movie with original screenwriter Leigh Whannell and would stick around as director on the next two entries.
Saw II would begin plot threads that would last throughout Bousman's tenure, coming to a bloody finish at the end of Saw IV, with the director set to make his return to the series with Spiral.
The original movie from low-budget horror powerhouses James Wan and Leigh Whannell, the original Saw was a creative use of minimal locations and it birthed one of the most iconic killers seen in the genre for some time.
Mostly revolving around the fates of two men who awake chained to the walls of an isolated room, with only two hacksaws and an ominous challenge from a famous serial killer for help, the movie quickly gained notoriety for its suspense but was equally criticized for its exploitative gore.
The highest-ranking movie on this list fared the best with critics perhaps in part because it appeared to bring the series to a close in an interesting way, killing the central killer (which is an act that the franchise's continuity would admirably stick to despite everything) and leaving a hanging plot thread that would, unfortunately, ultimately go nowhere.
Other than the original movie, it's the only entry to be solely credited to Leigh Whannell as the screenwriter and the emotional backbone of the story was something new for the franchise that critics responded positively towards, though the series would never really repeat its use.
