The Saw franchise is known for its graphic depictions of violence and gory, bloody deaths. So far, there have been eight films in the series, with a ninth on the way, fronted by Chris Rock (yes, Donkey from Shrek).
Beneath its aggressive, torture-porn exterior, the films actually have quite a deep, layered and twist-heavy storyline that turns them from series of jokey flicks into a pretty worthwhile investment. However, they still aren’t free of issues in continuity, both from shot to shot and from film to film.
Zep’s Car Changes
The first Saw film combines an intense, one-room scene with a few more action-heavy, horror-based scenes that follow Zep. Towards the end of the film, Zep has been rumbled and an intense car chase ensues. He starts out in a 1980s Ford Bronco II, but when he arrives at the warehouse, the car has changed into a 1990s For F-150. They’ve kept the make of the car the same but somehow changed the specifics. Shot for shot inconsistencies make sense, but how on earth could they have ended up using a different car between takes?
Immovable Box
Just a few moments later, the second biggest error in the first Saw film shows up. Lawrence uses a box to try and grab the phone in the middle of the room he has been stuck in but fails. He throws the box off to his side in anger. However, when the shot changes, the box is still lying there as if it had never moved.
This suggests that they recycled a shot that was originally supposed to show up earlier in the film. The next shot shows the box exactly where it had been thrown.
Changing Camera
One of Adam’s main character elements is his photography. It is one of the main reasons he has found himself in the middle of a Jigsaw game. In a flashback, we see him taking covert photos of Lawrence with his camera. However, at first, he has a massive black camera with a long lens and a big flash on top. When the scene changes, this camera seems to have shrunk, turned silver, and lost its flash and long lens. It changes back again in the next shot. Where are they getting all these cameras from?
Broken Clock?
One of the hardest things to keep consistent in a film is the time on the clocks. Obviously, films aren’t shot at the same speed as the events happening in the film, so if you’ve got a clock in one shot, it’ll move forward in time way before you desire.
During Saw II, Jigsaw explains to Eric that his estranged son Daniel is one of his victims, trapped in a game. The clock on the wall says 7:30 at the beginning of this conversation. The timer then goes down by 90 minutes, but the clock on the wall only reaches 8:00, suggesting that only 30 minutes have actually passed.
Amanda Doesn’t Scar
In Saw II we saw Amanda (the sneaky, twisted character who goes from victim to Jigsaw obsessive) slicing her wrists with razor blades. These would have healed, leaving scars on her arms that aren’t visible at any point during the events of Saw IV. This error in continuity runs all the way into Saw IV, where a flashback (set during the events of Saw III) actually references the scars that weren’t present in the film. It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
Upside Down Mask
At the very beginning of Saw IV, the guy performing the autopsy puts his mask on upside down. This is a bit of an error in itself because surely a trained professional in a complex profession would know exactly how to operate a mask like this.
However, his mistake doesn’t even stay consistent. When the shot changes, he seems to have fixed his mask in a split second, with it now being the correct way up.
Repeated Stomach Slices
One of the most brutal moments in the Saw franchise comes during the fifth entry into the series. Seth Baxter is sliced apart by a massive pendulum-like it’s nothing. The scene is actually quite convincing as well, but there is one shot that messes up the continuity.
The pendulum gets him a fair few times, slicing him almost completely in half, before changing to a different shot that shows his stomach getting cut for the first time again. This proves that a shot from before his slicing was reused in a position that didn’t make any sense.
The Wrong Knife
Saw VI is without a doubt the worst entry in the franchise. It also has a glaring error that doesn’t add up the events of Saw V. Dr. Adam Heffner is talking to the detectives about the knife used to remove the jigsaw piece from Eddie’s skin. He explains that it was apparently the same knife used to cut the jigsaw piece from Seth Baxter.
However, the knife in question was partially serrated, but the knife we see cut the jigsaw piece from Seth Baxter back in Saw V is very clearly non-serrated. Either this is an error in continuity, or the doctor doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Different Handwriting
One of the best twists in the Saw franchise is the return of Dr. Gordon during Saw VII. We had already seen a bit of an inconsistency back in Saw II when his stand-in didn’t look anything like him, but Saw VII gives us a more subtle problem. There is a flashback showing Dr. Gordon writing “I know who you are,” but the handwriting has completely changed when Hoffman reads it. Why not just use the actual note Dr. Gordon had already written?
John’s Story Doesn’t Add Up
Everyone thought that Saw VII was going to be the big finale for the Saw franchise. What they didn’t expect was a big-budget prequel/sequel seven years later. Jigsaw was actually quite brilliant, but one thing about Jigsaw’s (who is shown in flashbacks) story didn’t really add up.
He might well have heard Anna and her husband arguing, but nothing we are shown suggests he has any knowledge that she was framing her husband, and therefore he had no reason to bring her into his game.
