On a budget of $1.2 million, the film would go on to gross $103 million worldwide, and gave birth to a reliably successful and provocative franchise that includes several sequels (with Darren Lynn Bousman ushering the series into multiverse territory after stepping in to direct Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV), two video games, bountiful merch, and the kind of indelible iconography that turns one’s blood cold and that many horror movies only dream of. In just shy of two hours, the future Hollywood visionaries threw their audience into a proto-escape-room nightmare, and gave them a new language of gruesome, harrowing horror, filled with twisted morality games and deeply cut flesh. The franchise was more than just a gross-out gorefest, too upon its release in 2004, the first Saw film introduced the world to director and co-writer James Wan (who later directed The Conjuring and Aquaman) and co-writer Leigh Whannell (who helmed 2020’s The Invisible Man). There was a time when it didn’t feel like a proper Halloween until a new Saw movie hit theaters, ready to gauge out the eyes of its squeamish, enraptured audiences.

New saw movie