One Of Cinema's Greatest Plot Revelations

The Saw films are, contrary to what some non-viewers might expect, incredibly complicated in very clever ways on a thematic and storytelling level.  Exploring very fundamental but deep issues of moral responsibility, supposed justice, the capacity for change, the looming nature of death, whether there is any objective meaning in life, the franchise is intentionally, overtly, aggressively philosophical in ways that almost no other contender manages across its entire respective series.  The first film focused more on the existential desire to live and to what it takes to seek life passionately in the face of death.  So well-crafted is the story and so intense is the philosophical emphasis that it is one of the few movies that rises above the low general production values that were distinctly improved upon as early as Saw II.

Almost all of the films end with a twist, only some of them foreshadowed by what is shown or stated earlier in the runtime, such as with Saw II and its "safe place" comment.  As each installment ends with a revelation or confrontation of some kind, the interlocking plot threads tethering the entire franchise become more clear, and sometimes these connections are brought to light ahead of the endings.  For example, the contents of a letter in Saw III come to light multiple movies afterward.  The climax of the ironically titled Saw: The Final Chapter (followed by Jigsaw, Spiral, and the upcoming Saw X) illuminates key events in or between multiple movies.  The extensive use of flashbacks in all but 2021's Spiral keeps most of the more recent entries intimately connected with the exact details of the prior films.

In 2004, the original Saw started the trend of having an often elaborate or genuinely incredible twist.  It is not a requirement that a plot twist ever be subtly telegraphed beforehand, though rewatching, replaying, or rereading a story might nonetheless show that there was never an actual misdirect.  Yes, Saw's climactic reveal is objectively spectacular as a narrative revelation even though there is nothing suggesting that it is on its way.  Protagonists Dr. Lawrence Gordon and Adam have been trying to escape a lethal predicament.  Awakening in a bathroom at an unknown location, they find their legs chained and hacksaws at the ready.  Seemingly, their abductor wants them to cut off their own feet to escape.

An apparent corpse rests in the middle of the room with a pistol and a pool of blood by the skull, implied to be the body of a suicide victim.  Desperation and a countdown for the kidnapper's "test" or "game" drives Dr. Gordon to saw off his foot and attempt to kill Adam, as a voice recorder had instructed.  Once Dr. Gordon shoots Adam in hopes of satisfying the Jigsaw killer, assures his companion that he will crawl away to find help, and leaves the wounded Adam chained in the bathroom.  Once Adam listens to a pre-recorded tape, the corpse turns out to be an illusion; it only seems that the body is dead.  In Saw III, we see Jigsaw, or John Kramer, prepare himself to lay on the floor with the help of accomplices.  In Saw, while Adam remains trapped, the body simply begins to rise as it is unveiled that it was not a corpse at all.

The unmoving body in the room is ultimately the Jigsaw killer himself.  John Kramer walks out and seals the terrified Adam in the bathroom to die alone, uttering a recurring phrase of the franchise: "Game over."  In a franchise often involving situations that are not as they might initially appear, such as how the assembled abductees in Saw V could have all survived their traps instead of struggling as individuals if only they worked together, this grand finale reveal is one that stands out not only as the first of its kind in the series, but also one of the most objectively unexpected and intelligent twists of the long-running franchise and general cinema.  It is not foreshadowed.  It takes multiple sequels to find out more about how early traps like this were set up.  The ending is one of many reasons that the first Saw rises above its meager visual effects as a masterpiece of storytelling.