After years of escalating gore and increasingly elaborate traps, the Saw franchise may finally be circling back to what made it unforgettable in the first place. Having now creatively re-involved its original co-creator, James Wan, ‘Saw 11’ is being framed not as another stomach-test to the audiences, but as a re-exploration of Jigsaw’s disturbing morality.
Wan is not keen on increasing the blood count. Instead, he would like to remind the audience why Saw used to be disturbing on a more personal level.
James Wan Wants Saw To Hurt Viewers’ Minds Again, Not Just The Stomach
Among the most eye-opening aspects of Wan’s recent remarks is his focus on the original philosophy of John Kramer. Jigsaw was not intended to be a mere executioner. His victims in the first Saw movie were not selected due to their evilness, but rather due to the fact that they had ceased to appreciate their lives.
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Jigsaw does not attack people just because they are immoral, as Wan explains. “He goes after people who don’t appreciate their lives. If you’re a scumbag, but you appreciate your life. He doesn’t see you as someone who’s wasting your life. So I want to go back to what we touched on in the first movie about that”, he told Letterboxd. This difference is important, and it is what subsequent sequels tended to blur or even forego in favor of shock value.
By returning to this concept, ‘Saw 11’ can become morally uneasy once again. The first movie made viewers grapple with challenging issues: Do people deserve a second chance? Can trauma be a form of “rehabilitation”? And how far is too far when trying to teach someone the value of living? Those are much more disturbing than any spinning blade or collapsing rib cage, and Wan is well aware of it.
‘Saw 11’ Could Be The Franchise’s Most Uncomfortable Reset
Wan has been open about his desire to make Saw scary again, and that is significant. As time passed, the franchise came to be associated with graphic spectacle, frequently favoring creative murders over mood, tension, or character. Fear was substituted with anticipation, not with what will happen, but with how bad it will be. Wan wants something that is psychologically scarring.
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The first ‘Saw’ was successful because it was intimate and cruel in a silent manner. “One of the things I really want to do with this next Saw is make it scary again. I want to make a scary Saw, not just gory, but psychologically scarring, like what Leigh and I did in the first movie.” Two men in chains in a dingy room, and they had to face their worst selves; that simplicity made everything strike harder.
It is not about nostalgia. It is a matter of realigning a franchise that lost its originality. In case ‘Saw 11’ is successful, it will not be because people walk out of the theater feeling shaken by gore, but rather because they walk out feeling unsettled, questioning, questioning, and maybe even a little disturbed by how close Jigsaw’s logic cuts to the bone.
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