Since the first film debuted in 2004, the Saw franchise has become infamous for its brutality. To many of the franchise’s fans though, the precarity of life is what allows the story to give way to a franchise about found family and queerness. And despite the story of Saw originally coming to a close in 2010—despite two recent “sequels,” the newly released Saw X is the first canonical entry since then—a younger, queer, and very online audience is reframing the narrative around these infamous films entirely.
The emergence of a fresh, queer take on Saw seems to have happened over the pandemic, with the majority of TikToks and fanfics about its characters gaining popularity then. In the seclusion of their homes and rooms, younger fans watching (and re-watching) a horror franchise have had a chance to see it as something older viewers wouldn’t expect: very queer. These fans found the series as it was wrapping up, when inklings of queerness were just little anecdotes to brush aside and address later. Now older, fans like myself are able to revisit the films and finally see ourselves in these lost characters, albeit treating them with more care in our heads than the actual franchise does. In doing so, the queer fandom’s presence has become the dominating force behind the franchise’s revival.
“I do think a significant factor in the franchise’s longevity has been the queer community’s relation to it, and I think whoever is behind Lionsgate’s marketing is finally beginning to recognize that fact,” says Alex, a 28-year-old with a background in forensic psychology who first watched the films in 2016 with her best friend.
