Top 10 Most Disturbing Saw Deaths

In this trap from the seventh installment of the series, Bobby must save his lawyer, Suzanne, from a contraption that is slowly raising her on a metal platform towards three pointy pieces of metal. When Bobby fails to successfully close a circuit, Suzanne’s eyeballs and mouth are slowly impaled by these jagged rods. Being slowly raised towards the rods is absolutely terrifying, and the initial pain of the metal inserting themselves into her eyeballs seems horrific. While there are gorier deaths in the series, this one is disturbing as hell, especially if you have a thing with eyes.

This scene finds FBI Agent Peter Strahm stuck in a room with no way out, as a pair of heavy metal walls slowly inch towards each other. Since he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, Strahm attempts to stop the walls with his body (because that would work), and ends up getting crushed as a result. This scene is terrible to watch, especially if you’ve ever broken a bone, because crunching noises fill the air and bones pop and protrude from his skin at disgusting angles. While we don’t see the final blow, our imaginations help us to fill in the grisly gaps.

This trap is just a smorgasbord of suckage, both for us and the doomed characters. It acts as a brutal and murderous Rube Goldberg machine, as a bunch of skinheads are killed in a variety of grisly ways: for example, one’s head is crushed by a car tire, another has his arms and jaw ripped off, and yet another is run over. They’re all nasty (if a little cartoonish), but perhaps the worst part of this scene is Evan’s glued skin peeling off the car seat. It looks revolting, especially in the shots where we see long strands of glue and his skin stretched between his back and the seat. Yuck.

For this entry, we’re going back to when the “Saw” movies were more unsettling than overly gory and disgusting. However, that doesn’t mean this death is any less horrifying. For this test, Michael has to dig inside his own eyeball to get the key that unlocks the death mask. However, like most of us would, he chickens out, so the trap springs on his head, burying numerous sharp nails into his face and skull. The ticking timer and chaotic editing style of the scene certainly add to the dread, and Michael’s horrified look is both terrifying and tragic. What a way to open the movie.

Okay, the “I think we’re breaking up with you, Dina” line is stupid, but aside from that, this opening to “Saw 3D” is gloriously disturbing and repellant. A back-and-forth battle with saw blades is fought between two men, with one of them even being cut in the chest. However, they each decide to kill the suspended woman instead, and she is lowered onto a saw blade that slowly cuts her in half. From the screaming public, to the woman’s blood splattering everywhere, to her guts being flung at the audience in 3D, this is one nasty death, and one of the “Saw” franchise’s finest openings.

This one is like the walls closing in from “Saw V,” only a billion times worse. A man named Timothy, who accidentally killed the protagonist’s son, is hooked up to a device that slowly twists his limbs and breaks his bones before it snaps his neck, mercifully putting him out of his misery. This would of course be excruciatingly painful, and the actor sells it extremely well, as his screams and tears help make the scene even more horrifying than it already is. “Saw III” is around the time audiences started tuning out of the “Saw” franchise, but highly disturbing scenes like this reminded them why they kept returning to the series.

This death is one of the most highly regarded moments in the franchise, and for good reason. In this trap, Seth becomes a victim to a swinging metal pendulum, which slowly cuts deeper into his stomach with each pass, spewing blood and organs across the room, before it finally finishes the job by cutting him in half. Everything about this scene gets the anxiety going, from the whooshing of the pendulum coming inches from Seth’s body to the ever-growing gashes in his stomach. It’s both a fantastic way to open the movie and a means of weeding out those who can’t stomach the gore. Pun definitely intended.

This death was just straight up murder, and it changed the “Saw” game forever. In this trap, a woman named Kerry is hooked up to a device and must reach her hand into a vat of acid to grab a key. Despite doing so and opening the lock, the trap remains secured to her ribs, and it proceeds to tear her ribcage from her body when the timer ends. It’s not only the gore and the horrifying concept that make this death so disturbing (although they certainly help); it’s the fact that Kerry succeeds and dies anyway because the trap is inescapable that really gets to us.

During the finale of this movie, an insurance executive by the name of William Easton is stabbed by rows upon rows of needles, which in turn inject hydrofluoric acid into his body. The acid then melts his body from the inside, and we see his stomach slowly start to bleed and melt as the acid works on his organs. He then dies, and the lower half of his body slides away from the upper half, spilling entrails and blood all over the floor. While “Saw” is infamous for its many grotesque deaths, this one is something else. It is nasty, horrific, and stomach-churning.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions.
- The Chains
“Saw III” (2006)

- The Knife Chair and Razor Wire
“Saw IV” (2007)

- The Lawn Mowers
“Saw 3D” (2010)

The reverse bear trap is a “Saw” staple. However, it was never as upsetting as it was in “Saw 3D,” when Jill Tuck is the unfortunate victim. In her death scene, the trap rips her jaw apart, flinging teeth and matter at the audience in the process. The resulting shot of her obliterated face is repulsive, since we see strands of muscle, her tongue, and blood pouring from the wound. Say what you will about “Saw 3D,” but its death scenes are nauseating – just as we’ve come to expect from this gruesome series. In fact, “3D” gave us the grossest death of the entire franchise, sending it off with a bang, some teeth, and lots o’ blood.