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By Andy King
I researched the Saw franchise which is made up of seven films. Each film was released on the Friday before Halloween: Saw (James Wan, 2004: Twisted Pictures and Evolution Entertainment, $1.2m: $103m [world; $55m USA], 7.7) Trailer; Wiki. 18. Saw II (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005: Twisted Pictures and Evolution Entertainment, $4m: $148m [world; $87m USA], 6.7) Trailer; Wiki. 18. Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006: Twisted Pictures and Evolution Entertainment, $10m: $165m [world; $80m USA], 6.2) Trailer; Wiki. 18. Saw IV (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2007: Twisted Pictures, $10m: $139m [world; $73m USA], 5.9) Trailer; Wiki. 18. Saw V (David Hackl, 2008: Twisted Pictures, $10.8m: $114m [world; $57m USA], 5.7) Trailer; Wiki. 18. Saw VI (Kevin Greutert, 2009: Twisted Pictures and A Bigger Boat, $11m: $68m [world; $27m USA], 6.0) Trailer; Wiki. 18. Saw 3D (Kevin Greutert, 2010: Twisted Pictures, A Bigger Boat and Serendipity Productions, $17m: $136m [world; $46m USA], 5.5) Trailer; Wiki. 18. There have also been two video games made based on the films; Saw: The Video Game and Saw II: Flesh and Blood.
John's wife had a miscarrage due to an assault on her by a man called Cecil, which eventually led him to divorce his wife (Jill). John was later told by Dr. Gordon that he had cancer and an inoperable brain tumor and was dying. He was then denied health coverage by William Easton. John then attempted suicide because of his depression but he survived it, which made him value his life more.
This caused John to try to get people to appreciate their lives more. He did this by putting his carefully selected victims in traps, telling them why they have been put in the circumstance and telling them how to escape. If they managed to escape then John believed that it would cause them to appreciate their lives more.
John began recruiting apprentices to continue what he had been doing, as his health was getting worse. The only known apprentices were Amanda Young, Lieutenant Mark Hoffman and Dr. Lawrence Gordon. Amanda Young and Dr. Gordon were both survivors of Jigsaw's traps in the first film.
Victims
In total there were about 64 deaths in the Saw franchise (including Jigsaw and his apprentices etc.), but not all of them were in traps.
Summary
Something that surprised me about the films was the short amount of time they were shot it. The first film was shot in 18 days and the second was done in 25 days. I was also surprised at the quality of the films for their low budgets. One of the things that might influence my own slasher opening is using subtle references from other films/directors in my opening. For example, the James Wan in the first film uses lots of references from Dario Argento's horror films, such as black gloves of the unseen killer.