The Big Picture
The traps in the Saw franchise are based on real medieval torture methods. Saw co-writer Leigh Whannell drew inspiration for Jigsaw from his own experience with health issues. The character of Zep Hindle in the first Saw film was inspired by a true story about a man who broke into homes and tickled children’s feet.
When a horror movie says that it’s based on a true story, we should often take it with a grain of salt. They may have roots in reality, or be inspired by real events or people, but rarely are they actually based on true accounts. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre famously claims to be based on a true story, but is really just loosely inspired by the crimes of real-life serial killer Ed Gein. Still, it’s always scary to see the foreboding “based on a true story” tagline in a horror movie, because a lot of times the story is so totally messed up that we don’t want to even think about the real people behind it. So the idea of anything in the Saw franchise being even remotely rooted in reality is, to put it simply, horrifying. But writers Leigh Whannell and James Wan revealed that the first film in the franchise has a lot of real-world inspiration, and shared the true stories that formed the gorey franchise.
Saw
Two strangers awaken in a room with no recollection of how they got there, and soon discover they’re pawns in a deadly game perpetrated by a notorious serial killer.
Release Date October 1, 2004
Runtime 100
The ‘Saw’ Traps Are Rooted in Medieval History
With how gruesome the Saw traps are, you might think that they’re just the sick product of the creator’s imagination. After all, there’s no way we’d really do this to someone in real life, right? Well, as it turns out, the traps, which have become the draw of the Saw films, are based on medieval torture methods, so they’re very much real. Saw X director Kevin Greuter spoke about this in an interview with SFX Magazine.
“Every year when I’ve been told we’re doing another shoot I’m like, ‘How do we do it?’ Because a lot of it starts with the script, but sometimes the traps and cells are very shorthand. In the script, sometimes they are just as they appear, but usually, there are a lot of long meetings between assorted people – the writers, the production designer, the actors – where you just sit and hash through it.” Greuter explained. “I have lots of books on medieval torture machines and other dark stuff, and sometimes we just pore through it and shoot ideas off each other. Some of the traps have evolved quite a lot from how they started. And then you have to think about how to actually pull it off. I was very nervous about some of the things that we did; nervous on a safety level and nervous thinking it was just going to look ridiculous.”
With how twisted some of the traps can get, it’s chilling to think that any of them were once used for real, and not just created for a horror movie. But that’s not where the real-world inspiration ends, as Whannell and Wan shared some of the more personal stories that inspired the basis of both the film’s plot, and the character of John Kramer (Tobin Bell) himself.
Leigh Whannell Created the Character of Jigsaw From His Own Experience
Image via Lionsgate Films.
In a 2010 interview with AV Club, Saw writers Leigh Whannell and James Wan looked back on their careers, which, of course, included some talk about Saw. When discussing how they came up with the premise of the film, Whannell said that Wan had come up with a beginning and an end to the film, and it was Whannell’s job to bridge the gaps between them. He revealed that, at the time of making the film, he was experiencing migraines every day. It got to the point that he started having tests done, including an MRI, which led to the creation of the titular villain, John Kramer/Jigsaw.
“I had an MRI, and it was such a weird experience to be just sitting there in the waiting area of a neurology ward, being nervous about getting an MRI. And that really was the impetus for the Jigsaw character. I started to think, “What if you were given the news that you had a tumor and you were going to die soon? How would you react to that?” So I started to imagine this character who had been given a time limit, who’d been told that he had a year, two years to live, really, and that his condition would slowly kill him. Then I sort of attached that to the idea of somebody who put people in a literal version of that. Instead of a doctor telling you, “You have a year to live, make the best of it,” this guy would put people in a situation and say, “You have 10 minutes to live. How are you going to spend those 10 minutes? Are you going to get out of it?” I thought that would be a good way to capture the idea of why somebody would stick two people in this room and give them a time limit to get out.”
Whannell continued on to say that he thinks the sequels tainted the first film because of how much the audiences latched onto the traps, and that the franchise has now gained the reputation of just being about the traps and the gore, when that wasn’t the original message he and Wan tried to convey. “Jigsaw and his message was sort of a small part of the first film that got extrapolated on. And I think people just respond to it because they love hypotheticals.” Whannell said. But once again, there’s more to the lore of Saw, and this is when it starts to get really creepy.
One of Jigsaw’s Apprentices Is Based on a Real Crime
In the first Saw movie, we find out that Zep Hindle (Michael Emerson) is working with Jigsaw on his crimes — though not of his own free will. Flashbacks reveal that he was an orderly at the same hospital that John Kramer was a patient in. During Kramer’s frequent stays to keep up with his condition, Zep became quite fond of the man, and even interrupted Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes) when he kept referring to Kramer as “the patient” instead of by his name. Months later, Zep is kidnapped by Kramer, injected with a slow-acting poison, and given a tape with clear instructions. The instructions say that Zep is to kidnap Dr. Gordon’s wife and daughter, and hold them hostage while Dr. Gordon himself is put through one of Jigsaw’s twisted games. However, if Dr. Gordon fails, Zep is required to kill his wife and daughter. It’s a twisted reveal, which only serves to up the stakes, and as it turns out, it was based on a true news story James Wan heard when he was in college.
In a featurette on the Saw II DVD, Wan and Whannell tell of a true story about a man who breaks into people’s houses and tickles the feet of their children. “It was the creepiest thing I’d ever heard, I was so frightened,” Wan exclaimed. “I remember after hearing that story, I slept for the next two, three nights with a hammer by my bedside.” The pair continued on to share how the rest of the story played out, explaining that, when the man was caught, he didn’t say much, and he just seemed like a very quiet and reclusive man. But when the police questioned him, he said that he didn’t do it alone, and was actually forced to break into people’s homes. He said that he had received a jigsaw piece that told him to carry out the crimes. Naturally, this became the basis of the Zep character, and the jigsaw aspect lent itself well to the true antagonist of the film, John Kramer, AKA Jigsaw.
So, while Jigsaw himself may not be a real guy kidnapping people and putting them in torture devices, Saw isn’t entirely fictional. It’s built upon very real stories and history, that only add to the eerie brutality, the franchise is known for — sort of like a puzzle all on its own, with all of these little pieces of fact coming together to create one masterfully scary tale. It just goes to show how brilliant the minds of James Wan and Leigh Whannell are, and how brilliant a film Saw is. Yes, it may have become overshadowed by the gore in the later films, but the first film is a phenomenal, slow-burn descent into utter terror, and has rightfully earned its acclaim within the horror genre.
Saw is available to watch on Prime Video in the U.S.
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