One horror sub-genre I’ve mostly stayed away from is the splatter film, more recently characterized as torture porn. These are movies that put the gore front and center and revel in the destruction of the human body.

I don’t need to watch that. And, perhaps more important, there just haven’t been many good ones. If the Citizen Kane of splatter films is out there, I’ll give it a shot. But these movies are more interested in pushing the envelope, risking censorship, and drumming up publicity.

I do make an exception for one franchise, however: the Saw films. While these movies certainly feature their share of uncomfortable brutality, at their core they are much more interesting. In fact, they share something in common with the giallo films I covered yesterday, in that every Saw installment builds to a shocking last-minute reveal.

Something else I wouldn’t have guessed about the Saw movies before watching them is that they have a mythology as complicated and involved as the MCU. The Saw Cinematic Universe is a spider web of characters and timelines as fun to piece together as the puzzles that give villain Jigsaw his name.

The first Saw, directed by James Wong and written by Leigh Whannell, is barely a splatter film at all. It focuses on two men (played by Cary Elwes and Whannell) who wake up chained to the wall of a large bathroom. They don’t know how or why they got there, but a tape recorder informs them that one has to kill the other in order to win their freedom. What follows is a fascinating psychological battle that builds to a marvelous twist ending.

That low-budget mega-hit spawned nine sequels of varying quality. Jigsaw (played with subdued menace by a great Tobin Bell) is killed off very early, but the filmmakers go to increasingly elaborate lengths to further his vision. This year’s Saw X, for example, is set between the first and second films. Another is revealed to take place in parallel with a previous entry. And I won’t go down the rabbit hole of introducing Jigsaw’s willing accomplices.

Accomplices to what, you ask? Mostly putting people in elaborate traps to make them a) realize life is worth living, and/or b) pay for some hideous sin. Or some not so hideous sin, as in the case where a man was put in a trap due to his smoking habit. Not cool, Jigsaw.

All this to say that the Saw movies are the most fun you can have while watching somebody chop off her arm to atone for her role in predatory lending.

Here is my definitive ranking of the ten Saw films:

1. Saw (the only truly good movie in the bunch)
2. Saw VI
3. Saw II
4. Saw III
5. Saw V
6. Saw X
7. Saw IV
8. Jigsaw
9. Spiral: From the Book of Saw
10. Saw 3D

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