When it comes to film franchising, horror really is king – not so much in quality, but in spirit. Once a small independently funded horror movie strikes oil at the box office, you better believe there are 8 producers who are ready to milk that concept for all that it’s got through sequels, reimaginings, and reboots. Now this is true with any genre, but horror might be the only one that seems to thrive in this regard. Now thrive might not be the most correct word here, but these franchises tend to live for a long time, are made pretty quickly, and end up making a pretty good buck for those studios. They become something of a reliable crop for a studio, where they can help keep a steady stream of positive income for their respective owners. This was the common trend in the 80s and 90s with cash cow franchises like Friday The 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween, which were essential to keeping Paramount, New Line, and Universal’s box office numbers high. However, each of these franchises would crash after about 5 films, and would not see a new film until a couple of years later when someone decided to reboot them in a “modern” style. See Jason X, 2010’s A Nightmare on Elm Street, and 2007’s Halloween for examples of this.
Now, as these franchises slowly died off, other studios went on the hunt trying to find the next easy money, cash-cow horror franchise. Miramax got lucky pulling Wes Craven to make his Scream trilogy and New Line once again struck gold with the Final Destination films. However, the real winner of the horror franchise wars in the 2000s has to be the little indie film that no one could have possibly predicted would release its 10th film in 2023. That is the SAW franchise, which was initially directed by James Wan, written by Leigh Whannell, and produced by Lionsgate on a budget of about $1.2 million. This little horror project, which was initially crafted by Wan and Whanell as a, “How can we make a horror movie with as small of a budget as possible?” idea, grossed about $103 Million at the worldwide box office and would spawn 8 sequels, with the 10th movie being released on September 29th, 2023. All this being said, how did Saw become a billion-dollar franchise, and how did Lionsgate get 10 films out of it?
Well, first and most simply of all, these films made a profit when you look at what the budget covers exactly. All these movies, even the most recent films, are shot with very small budgets, with the highest budget being for the latest film Spiral with a budget of $20 million. Each other film usually had a budget between $1.2 to $17 million. So why are the costs so low?
Easy, no big stars and no big locations. Aside from the first film, which featured Cary Elwes, AKA The Dread Pirate Roberts, and Danny Glover, AKA the second half of the Lethal Weapon duo, no other Saw film has been able to acquire any big names to star as victims or detectives. The only notable star for the whole franchise is the series’ main protagonist, or antagonist, Tobin Bell as John Kramer, who has gone on to become the face of the franchise. This is extremely funny since, SPOILERS FOR SAW FRANCHISE, John Kramer died in the third film, leaving the role of Jigsaw to his protegees. Kramer does make a cameo in every movie, usually giving a speech about how or why the victims were chosen to take part in this film’s game. Aside from Kramer, the other main players of the sequels are smaller actors like Shawnee Smith, Costas Mandylor, and Betsy Russell, all of whom have their biggest breaks through the SAW franchise. The biggest names to come into the fold were Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson who co-starred in the 9th film Spiral, which was more a spin-off than anything.
Locations-wise, this franchise takes place in an unnamed town that is littered with abandoned warehouses, factories, tunnels, and houses. By withholding the name of the city, the filmmakers never have to worry about showing landmarks, blocking major streets, or staging buildings for filming. An additional bonus is that every scene (again aside from Spiral) either takes place at night or inside a dark, dank building so there’s no need to film anything outside. Thus, every scene could be filmed inside a simple studio for a fraction of the cost of shooting in any major city. Also, they definitely recycled a lot of the sets, especially the police stations. With all this in mind, just because you make a cheap movie, does not mean a film will automatically make $100 million overnight. There has to be something that keeps drawing people in.
Much akin to the success of the Final Destination films (remember those? That’s also getting another sequel in 2024), audiences, whether they admit it or not, enjoy watching people go through terrible, life-or-death situations. Whether it’s some sort of schadenfreude or twisted empathy, audiences eat this “torture porn” up and will go back a year later for more. Aside from that, these films are pretty straightforward storywise. People wake up in some sort of trap, we follow their “adventure” as the b-story of police officers and investigators work to figure out who Jigsaw is. Not too much homework for people who want to jump into the series, especially for people who are there just to see the shock factor. In fact, it’s hard to really call these movies scary, when in fact they’re more of just gross-out, mystery flicks. This works in favor of the series because the draw of the films was never to scare you more than the last, but to provide a new trap, a new live or death scenario, a new game for the audience to watch and get squeamish over.
Additionally, the ever-growing mystery plot of the how, why, and who behind the murders in each film is the real driving force of each film. Even with returning characters, every film really is its own separate puzzle for the audience to figure out. One of the most important symbols of the whole franchise is the puzzle piece, which was just a simple calling card for Jigsaw. When you look at each film, they are all just puzzle pieces that help reveal more and more of the grand picture as you add each piece. That being said, this is not some grand masterpiece. To call a spade a spade, these are cheaply made, torture films that have just enough meat on them to keep people coming back again and again.
Each film in the franchise, except for Saw VI and the recent Spiral, grossed more than $100 million at the box office. Regardless of the quality, these films make money, and it’ll be interesting to see how Saw X performs. A recurring point in this piece has been how Spiral has been the exception in many regards. Not only was it the least profitable, making only $39 million, but it was also the first film to take some bigger creative risks, like shooting scenes in the daylight. It’s not hard to believe that the failure of Spiral, is what caused the franchise to make a sudden about-face back to John Kramer, back to the classic trap formula, and back to immediately recognizable iconography of the first 2 films. Which could be the correct call here?
Live or die, the fate of the Saw franchise is up to the audiences. Go through another gory run of John Kramer’s games or follow an easier path and see Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, instead. In the end, the choice is yours.
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