Their captor is watching Adam and Lawrence through a camera hidden behind the bathroom's two-way mirror. In the present Lawrence's wife and daughter, Alison and Diana, are held captive in their home. Amanda escaped one of Jigsaw's traps, and believes Jigsaw helped her. Lawrence's alibi cleared him, but he agreed to view the testimony of the only known survivor of one of Jigsaw's games, heroin addict Amanda Young. He identifies their captor as the Jigsaw Killer, whom Lawrence knows of because he was once a suspect.įlashbacks show that while Lawrence was discussing the terminal brain cancer of a patient named John Kramer, he was approached by Detectives David Tapp and Steven Sing, who found his penlight at the scene of a Jigsaw 'game'. Lawrence realizes that the hacksaws are meant to be used on their feet, not their chains. Adam finds a bag containing two hacksaws inside a toilet, which they try to use to cut through their chains, but Adam's saw breaks and he throws it at the mirror in frustration. Lawrence's tape tells him to kill Adam by six o'clock, or his wife and daughter will be killed and he will be left to die. Adam's tape urges him to escape the bathroom. Both men find a tape in their pockets, and Adam is able to retrieve the recorder.
Between them is a corpse holding a revolver and a microcassette recorder. Lawrence Gordon, an oncologist, is chained to a pipe across the room.
A sequel, entitled Saw II, was released in 2005.Īdam, a photographer, awakens in a bathtub in a large dilapidated bathroom, chained at the ankle to a pipe. The film was theatrically re-released by Lionsgate on Octoto celebrate its tenth anniversary. Compared to its low budget, Saw performed very well at the box office, grossing more than $100 million worldwide and becoming, at the time, one of the most profitable horror films since Scream (1996). Although critical response to the film was divided, the film has gained a cult following since its release. Saw was first screened on January 19, 2004, before released in North America on Octoby Lionsgate. The film was given a small budget of $1.2 million and shot for 18 days. This proved successful in 2003 as producers from Evolution Entertainment were immediately attached and also formed a horror genre production label Twisted Pictures. In order to help attract producers they shot a low-budgetshort film of the same name from a scene out of the script. The screenplay was written in 2001, but after failed attempts to get the script produced in Wan and Whannell's home country of Australia, they were urged to travel to Los Angeles. The screenplay was written by Whannell, who co-created the story with Wan in their screenwriting debuts respectively. In it, Elwes and Whannell portray two men who awake to find themselves chained in a large dilapidated bathroom, with one being ordered to kill the other or his family will die. It is the first installment in the Saw franchise. Saw is a 2004 American psychological horror-thriller film directed by James Wan in his directorial debut, and starring Cary Elwes, Danny Glover, Monica Potter, Michael Emerson, Ken Leung, Tobin Bell and Leigh Whannell.