Saw is an iconic horror franchise that’s always worth a watch. It’s a crime thriller coupled with serial killers who commit gruesome murders to prove a twisted point about their morality. The victims wake up, finding themselves trapped and given a choice to torture themselves and survive or be killed brutally by some disturbing mechanism.

These morbid situations, or traps, are the Saw franchise’s most compelling and memorable element. If you don’t have the time (or the stomach) to sit down and binge all nine films to watch the victims struggle to escape each specific and creative set of confines, this article is for you.

Here are the top ten most disturbing traps from the Saw franchise, ranked from nightmarish to “every time I close my eyes, I see the horrors of that trap beneath my eyelids”- level terrifying.

10: Reverse Bear Trap (Multiple Appearances)

Arguably the most iconic trap from the franchise, the Reverse Bear Trap appears multiple times throughout the movies.

In Saw (2004), its victim is Amanda Young. She wakes up with a metal device secured to her head and soon learns that if she fails to take it off before the timer goes off, the machine will snap backward like a reverse bear trap, ripping Amanda’s face apart. She can only remove it by slicing into her cellmate’s stomach and removing the key from inside him while he’s still alive.

Amanda escapes just in time. She flings the device off one moment before it snaps open.

The reverse bear trap makes a few more appearances later in the franchise and only takes one victim’s life. This horrifying contraption deserves a spot on this list because of its infamy and the horrific concept of what it can do to the human body. It’s only number ten on the list because many people manage to pass this game.

9: Furnace Trap (Saw II)

The Majority of Saw II (2005) takes place in the Nerve Gas House, a large-scale trap with multiple people stuck inside. They each must face specific individual traps within the house to access the antidote to the nerve gas, which Jigsaw’s puppet tells the participants will kill them within two hours. If they manage to pass their games and get the antidote, a door will open shortly after the two-hour mark.

One of these individual games is the furnace trap. Obi Tate is the victim. There’s a furnace in the basement of the house, which contains two vials of the antidote. Obi hops inside and grabs them, which activates the door and causes it to close, shutting Obi inside and starting a fire. Obi can only survive by reaching through the flames to turn a valve and shut off the fire. He fails and perishes by burning alive.

8: Pig Vat Trap (Saw III)

This one is on the list because it’s unique, creative, and incredibly disgusting. It’s one of the many trials on Jeff Danlon’s larger quest to pass through the meatpacking plant rigged by Jigsaw and confront Timothy Young, the man who killed his young son.

The victim of the pig vat trap is Judge Halden, the man who presided over the court ruling that Timothy only serve a mere six months in prison. Jeff finds the Judge strapped to the bottom of a large vat, held down by his neck. When the tape plays, Jigsaw’s puppet instructs Jeff that to save the Judge and move into the next room to get closer to confronting Timothy, he must burn up all of his deceased son’s remaining belongings to find the key in the ashes.

As Jeff struggles with this choice, motors begin to whir, and decaying pig carcasses from within the plant begin to shutter forward, held up by large wires. They’re dropped into a meat blender, coming out the other end through a chute as a disgusting thick, greenish sludge that floods over the Judge’s body.

By the time Jeff retrieves the key, the Judge is almost entirely submerged by the wretched substance, with only his mouth peeking through the surface.

7: Classroom Trap (Saw III)

If your greatest fear is getting a fish hook stuck in your skin, this trap will haunt your nightmares.

The victim of the classroom trap was a drug addict named Troy, who struggled to stay out of prison due to his addiction. Jigsaw targeted him for just that reason. He instructed his apprentice Amanda to abduct Troy and bring him to a classroom, where she removes his clothes and stabs eleven large hooks through different body parts. Each hook is connected to a chain that keeps Troy in place. Before leaving, Amanda places a bomb near Troy and welds the door shut to prevent Troy from escaping.

When Troy awakes, he learns he must rip each hook out of his flesh before the timer goes off to escape the room and avoid dying in the bomb’s explosion. He gets all but one hook out before the bomb kills him. Even if he had escaped the hooks, he would have been trapped in the room because Amanda gave him no chance of escape.

6: Needle Pit (Saw II)

The needle pit is a simple yet horrific trap within the Nerve Gas House. Jigsaw set up the trap specifically for a drug dealer named Xavier. The group in the house comes across a room with a locked door and soon discovers that there is a vial of the antidote behind it.

The only way to unlock the door and get inside is with a key hidden within a pit in the floor. The problem is that the pit is also filled with thousands of used needles. Xavier refuses to take the test himself and instead throws Amanda in to retrieve the key.

It’s impossible not to wince as you watch Amanda sift through the needles, stabbing her flesh as she goes, while Xavier shouts at her to hurry from above.

5: Silence Circle (Saw 3D)

This trap was designed for Bobby Dagan, a man who pretended to survive Jigsaw’s tests and wrote a best-selling book about his journey, but was a fraud. Jigsaw took revenge by tossing him into a trap of his own.

The second trap within Bobby’s larger game was the silence circle. Bobby walks into a room and finds his publicist, Nina, confined in a straitjacket and some form of head restraint. Surrounding her head are sharp metal rods, with the pointy ends directly facing in towards Nina.

The two learn that Bobby must retrieve a key from Nina’s stomach to free her. It’s attached to a string he must pull, causing the key to rise through her stomach and tear through her esophagus. If he doesn’t free her from the trap in time, the metal rods will pierce through her neck and kill her.

On top of that, every time the decibel level goes above a whisper, the metal rods move even more quickly towards Nina’s throat to punish her for spreading Bobby’s lies to make a profit.

4: Pendulum Trap (Saw V)

This one is ruthless, considering that the victim had no hope of escaping this one at all.

Mark Hoffman, Jigsaw’s apprentice, decided to torture and kill Seth, the man who murdered his sister. Seth was originally sentenced to life in prison but got out after five years. That’s when Mark decided to take justice into his own hands in the most twisted way possible.

Seth woke up to find he was lying down shirtless, strapped to a table. A tape began to play and informed him that to escape death, he must crush his hands in a metal contraption. He’s promised that he will be freed once his hands are destroyed. If he doesn’t crush his own hands fast enough, he’ll die a brutal death. A colossal blade begins to swing back and forth like a pendulum over the center of Seth’s body, shifting lower and lower until it slices him in half.

Even though Seth completes his task and crushes his hands into a bloody, mangled mess, he is never released from the bindings. He slowly dies as the swinging blades descend on his stomach, slicing him deeper and deeper, scattering his organs across the room.

3: Razor Wire Maze (Saw)

The most straightforward traps are often the most diabolical. The victim of the razor wire maze is Paul Leahy, a man who attempted to die by suicide a month before Jigsaw abducted him. That’s exactly why Jigsaw targeted him for this trap, making it even more shiver-inducing.

Paul woke up inside a fence within a basement. At one end sits Paul, mostly naked and terrified. At the other end, Paul saw an open door. However, between him and the door to freedom lies a maze of razor wire. Paul soon learns he must make it to the door within two hours, or he’ll be locked in the basement and left to die. His only chance of survival is through the razor wire maze.

Police find Paul’s body trapped within the wire weeks later. He clearly attempted to get free but never made it to the door. Can you imagine what he must have felt as he forced his body through the sharp wires, slicing him raw, and the door swung shut with a dull thud?

2: Angel Wing Trap (Saw III)

I’ll never unsee this one, no matter how hard I try.

Detective Allison Kerry is the victim of the dreaded angel wing trap. When she wakes, she’s dangling from the ceiling, confined by a metal device attached to her rib cage. There’s a key sitting in a tub of acid directly in front of her face. The tape starts and Jigsaw’s puppet informs Kerry that to live, she must reach into the vat of acid and retrieve the key to unlock herself. If she fails to fish it out before the timer runs out or the key dissolves into nothingness, the contraption on her ribcage will open up like a set of angel wings and rip her apart.

Kerry is determined to get that key. After burning her hand and turning the clear acid red with blood, she grabs the key and unlocks herself before the timer goes off. But there’s a problem. Kerry discovers another lock holding the device in place, and her chance of survival is a hoax.

Amanda walks into the room just before the angel wings open up, spilling Kerry’s organs all over the floor.

1: Venus Fly Trap (Saw II)

The Death Mask, or the Venus fly trap, is the last trip I’d ever want to find myself in, and here’s why.

The victim, Michael Marks, realizes he’s no longer at home in bed. Instead, he’s stuck in a room with a strange device secured to his neck, and his eye is injured. To his horror, he plays the tape and realizes that the device around his neck will eventually close with a snap like a venus fly trap, sending sharp spikes through his head to kill him.

Michael’s only hope of freeing himself from this gruesome torture device is to unlock it with a key. However, he learns that Jigsaw surgically placed the key inside Michael’s eye, and the only way to get to the key is to cut his own eye open with a scalpel.

While other traps in the Saw franchise have disturbing eye-gore, this one takes the cake as the most horrifying by far. Michael is forced to physically extract something from his eye after cutting it open with a scalpel. Something so disgustingly intimate about that act makes me want to cover my eyes forever.

He only has one minute to complete this gruesome task, and he fails. I can’t imagine trying to make it through this one.

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Now your brain is chock full of disturbing images of death and murder. You’re welcome! Did I miss any of your favorite traps in this list?