Film Theory: Saw, How A Dead Man Killed Jigsaw

i want to play a game across the saw franchise there have been a hundred total deaths but keep in mind they weren't all committed by me my followers are numerous and their talents have served me well a doctor for medical procedures a detective to hide our work former survivors of my games who've gone on to rehabilitate others and yet across nine movies one of my partners has stayed silent one has been hidden in plain sight never revealed prying eyes my secret accomplice today i lay out the clues that you've missed that spell out who he is and you'll never watch this franchise the same way again like or subscribe make your choice [Applause] hello internet welcome to film theory the show where killer content sometimes means content about killers today we're diving back into the saw franchise to take a closer look at jigsaw's murder operation i've never murdered anyone fine then uh let's go with super deadly rehabilitation racket whatever you call it though working for jigsaw has got to be like the worst gig ever you get long night shifts you get poor job security you're constantly working in dirty bathrooms ripping sewers just generally unhygienic conditions i mean what is this amazon booyah got him with the topical humor and just like with amazon if the employees started to unionize for better working conditions well we all know what would happen over time the movies reveal that at least five other people or apprentices have been part of jigsaw's organization helping him find victims and set up games i suppose teamwork truly does make the dream work but for as large as jigsaw's organization became the films never truly explain who's helping jigsaw study his targets and learn their patterns pre-abduction there seems like there's a missing piece to this puzzle a missing apprentice someone who's yet to be revealed as part of team jigsaw i believe that person to be none other than adam stanheit the victim from the first film and pretty much the first person we meet in the entire series not only do i think that he survived the events of the first film i think we can then lay a groundwork of evidence proving he joined up with jigsaw after the events of the movie and maybe just maybe set up the dominoes that would ultimately kill jigsaw once and for all for those of you who need a refresher as to who exactly adam is in the first saw film we're immediately met with one of the most iconic images in all of horror history two men adam and dr gordon both shackled to a disgusting bathroom floor as part of jigsaw's game you see jigsaw aka john kramer seeks to test people who don't appreciate their lives and jigsaw's beef without him is that he just sat on the sidelines a freelance photographer who spied on adulterous couples someone who has paid to watch shady people do shady things instead of actually taking action adam had actually been hired to follow around his fellow player in the game dr gordon who was the prime suspect for the jigsaw murders at the time by the end of the movie dr gordon saws off his own foot shoots at him and crawls out of the bathroom in order to survive he's later nursed back to health by jigsaw and goes on to become one of his faithful followers as for adam well he's left to realize that the true jigsaw was in the room with him the entire time john cramer rises out of a pool of blood and gives us this iconic finale the first movie ends with adam's fate unclear we're left to assume that adam just bleeds to death in the bathroom still shackled to the floor that is until saw three when we see a flashback as to what really happened after the first movie ended we see amanda another of jigsaw's proteges trying to suffocate adam to death to put him out of his misery and this is where adam's story is believed to have ended as we later see his nasty decayed corpse still chained to the floor and both saw two and saw the final chapter so if he's dead why would i possibly think that he could be jigsaw's secret accomplice well let's start by taking a closer look at adam's supposed death scene in saw 3 amanda is shown to be suffocating adam for 36 seconds before she breaks down in tears and the scene abruptly ends and we know that this is meant to be a roughly accurate estimation of time because the scene doesn't have many cuts from the moment that the bag goes over his head here's the thing about that though 30 seconds without oxygen probably isn't enough to kill him according to past studies it takes approximately 30 seconds to three minutes to render someone unconscious severe neurological damage starts at around the three minute mark and brain death occurs around the five minute mark if oxygen is restored within three minutes then a person can feasibly recover now admittedly when dealing with oxygen deprivation mere seconds could make the difference between life death and irreparable damage so suffocation isn't something to take lightly and factors like adam's head trauma his panicked response his weakened state all of that could have impacted his overall survival but looking purely at the timing here it's likely that he was just knocked out during the scene heck adam went nearly that long without oxygen at the start of the film when he was in the tub in fact to get amanda to stop her attack adam could have easily been playing dead which is a tactic that he employed previously in the game all right he wasn't great at it but maybe he picked up a tip or two after witnessing a pro it's also worth noting that we never get confirmation of his death here the scene cuts away pretty much immediately after adam stops struggling and when it comes to saw if a death isn't definitively shown on the screen then the character always comes back we've seen this before with other characters like dr gordon agent perez detective matthews speaking of detective matthews by the way he serves as an interesting case here because like adam he too was supposed to be killed by amanda again in saw three we see that she supposedly beat him to death but left before making sure the deed was done sure enough he survived and not only did he survive jigsaw sent one of his accomplices to retrieve him and secretly nurse him back to hell in short lots of people get secretly nursed back to health in these movies and amanda has herself a track record of not fully killing people off in fact it's more than possible that jigsaw did something similar here in saw three when amanda claims that she's a murderer jigsaw responds that he's been cleaning up her mistakes emphasis on the plural he took my life from me i just returned a favor no amanda that's what you thought but i know differently you left him for dead didn't you but i cleaned up your mistakes and i forgave you for them he didn't want his protege committing murders that broke his rules that's why jigsaw had an accomplice intervened to save detective matthews but to the best of our knowledge matthews was really her only quote unquote mistake so why would jigsaw say that this is plural well the jigsaw 3 director's cut shows that when amanda snuck off to kill adam jigsaw woke up and eyed her with suspicion it's an interesting detail to include especially considering that this is the director's cut so it's footage that he felt was important enough to get added back into the story that he wanted to tell if jigsaw truly pieced together that she was gonna go kill adam he could have called upon one of his other accomplices to swing by the bathroom and clean up yet another of her mistakes but here's the clincher the most compelling piece of evidence that adam's death was faked look at the corpse left in the bathroom that we see in both saw two and final chapter notice that it has the shackle on the right foot but throughout the bathroom game adam is shown to have the shackle on his left foot put his left leg in the shackle this would seem like a massive production detail to get wrong not just once but twice when trying to faithfully recreate the first film set down to the smallest detail there is no way a mix-up like this could have happened by accident the only reason for the shackle to wind up on the wrong foot here is if someone unshackled adam and then switched him out with a corpse in order to fake his death but the evidence for adam's involvement here doesn't just stop at him being alive and potentially nursed back to health remember that adam's job prior to the bathroom game was taking surveillance photos sounds like it'd be a useful skill for a killer who profiles victims and then abducts them from their daily routine does it not so is it any coincidence then that after adam's test black and white photographs of victims become a prominent part of jigsaw's operation nearly all of the victims in saw four five six and the final chapter have photographs taken of them many of them seemingly taken unknowingly while the victims were being watched from afar one after another after another enough to fill an entire photo album but where did these candid photos come from someone must have been taking surveillance of the victims and who do we see taking photos just like these adam granted photographs did occasionally show up in jigsaw's operation prior to the bathroom game hello mark if you're so sick then why do i have so many photos of however perhaps adam's involvement goes back even further than we've been led to believe with jigsaw anonymously enlisting adam's surveillance talents before he was ever tested after all adam is established to not ask a lot of questions when dealing with mysterious clients he calls himself bob and he gives me the money up front 200 bucks a night i know i was gonna end up here i would have asked for a hell of a lot more in fact it's probable that jigsaw may have even hired adam to help him track down his first victim ever cecil the man that assaulted jigsaw's wife and cost the couple their unborn child software goes to great lengths to depict nearly every step of jigsaw preparing for his first killing it's an important one in his backstory after all and yet for all the meticulous detail it shows in the planning process the film never shows us how jigsaw actually tracked down cecil's whereabouts in the first place all of a sudden jigsaw's just shown to be in possession of a bunch of photographs with a file with an address on it that someone presumably provided him it's very possible that jigsaw enlisted adam to find cecil snap some shots and tail him back to his home address no questions asked and from that point forward jigsaw became a repeat customer eventually throwing adam into a game because you know he just has a habit of doing that to his followers but adam being alive doesn't just explain where a bunch of photographs came from it also fills in the gaps for one of the most pivotal plot elements in the entire series jigsaw's death you see jigsaw's demise is basically the result of an impossibly complex series of dominoes a victim named jeff slits jigsaw's throat because apprentice amanda shot jeff's wife and amanda shot jeff's wife because someone else on team jigsaw mark hoffman blackmailed her into doing it threatening to tell jigsaw about amanda's connection to cecile but wait a minute back up a second how the heck could hoffman have possibly known this if this scene between amanda and cecil had been caught on camera jigsaw would know too he's seen the footage and if this information surfaced as part of a police investigation amanda would have been charged as an accomplice so this means that someone who was there that night must have informed hoffman about amanda's presence but who could have done it well funny enough this pivotal flashback scene from saw four depicting that fateful evening is packed with characters from throughout the series paul from the razer wire trap the guy from amanda's first game it's a literal who's who of future jigsaw victims apparently this was just a night of wild coincidences most critically though addison from saw two is shown to be present even going so far as to proposition jigsaw yeah honey i want some company this is important because adam's photography business specializes in documenting infidelity i get paid to take pictures of rich guys like you who go to cd out of the way motel therefore adam might have had a reason for hanging around this corner of town to be fair the film never outright shows adam but he could have just been lurking off screen now that would obviously sound like me making excuses except for the fact that the movies pull this trick repeatedly in fact with this very same scene amanda evidently was out of sight the first time this flashback was shown to the audience only for later films to reveal that she too was hidden in the corner the entire time if adam supplied the ammunition for hoffman to blackmail amanda that would make adam the one truly responsible for jigsaw's death in a way it kind of bookends the entire series in saw the final chapter jigsaw told dr gordon that he would keep no more secrets from him i will keep no more secrets from you it's never explained what he meant by this they just kind of leave that promise hanging perhaps the biggest secret of all stems from jigsaw letting gordon live under the belief that adam was dead when in fact he was alive and secretly aiding in the jigsaw operation the entire time jigsaw initially targeted adam due to him being a mere voyer that sat in the shadows watching everyone else commit their misdeeds but jigsaw's operation allowed adam to actively intervene in the lives of those he watched in the end perhaps jigsaw's lessons ultimately backfired as the one who had once been content to sit on the sidelines suddenly started to play puppet master himself pulling the strings to pit jigsaw as followers against each other i guess adam did learn from the best he finds ways for his victims to kill themselves but hey that's just a theory a film theory and cuts [Music] you

Channel: The Film Theorists

Views: 3,221,557

Keywords: saw, saw movies, jigsaw, jigsaw saw, saw jigsaw, jigsaw death, saw 2, saw spiral, saw kill count, kill count saw, saw 3, saw scene, saw traps, how to survive, how to survive saw, saw series, saw explained, who is jigsaw, jigsaw apprentice, film theory, film theorists, matpat, film theory saw, film theory scary

Id: _shya2aE75M

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022