It’s dark, you have no clue where you are. A light turns on, and a TV shows a clown. “Hello [reader], you don’t know me, but I know you. I want to play a game. Here’s what happens if you lose….” You’re shivering in fear, maybe even bargaining for your life, but nothing works. You have to play the game, so, you think you’ll just be afraid later, snap to it, and get the game over with.

Ah, that surge of adrenaline, that flicker of misplaced hope. You think you can compartmentalize fear? That you can just "snap to it" and treat this like some grim task to be completed? That's adorable. That's precisely the mindset my teacher, John, banked on. You see, the game was never about your survival. It was about proving his point.Let's turn that TV off. You don't need to see what happens if you lose. You need to understand why you were never going to win.

Ah, the old “illusion of choice.” Something George Carlin explained perfectly. You see, you have two political parties, you have six corporations that control your information, and a dwindling number of banks to keep your money. But because you have hundreds of brightly colored cereal options, or hundreds of brands of ice cream, you think you have a choice.

Well, in Saw, it works the same way. You THINK you have a choice. John specifically uses that word because he knows your panicked brain, already moving back to its base state will only quantify what he’s about to ask. Rip open another person’s skull to open a bear trap, or your head gets ripped off. Dig through a bunch of used needles to find an antidote, or die from the poison in your veins. Sounds simple enough. Live or die?

Your base instincts just lied to you. It was never about living and dying, that was just to make sure you thought “fight or flight.” You see, the correct question was “how do you want to suffer?” That leads us into the second point.

Let’s say you do get your panic under control and focus on the task at hand. Congrats, you just lived through stage one. So, what now, cowboy? Think you can stop the intake of the gas? Maybe you could open the door and run? Every inch of this room has been carefully crafted for your maximum torture. And hey, if you die, that’s just the frosting on the cake. There’s a reason for every placed screw, if you cover one vent, the gas will get in through another. Maybe, you’ll even have to cut off a limb just to free yourself. In the words of Francis Dollarhyde from Manhunter: “Now, do you see?” No matter how you try to escape, you only do so if you pay the price.

Let’s go back to point one for a second, because it overlaps point three. Illusion of choice. John has been played psychological global-thermonuclear war while you’ve been playing checkers. The nuclear missile of doomsday? The tape. What’s on the tape? It’s a strange voice, you’re panicked. “You don’t know me, but I know you,” you’re panicked. John knows every weakness, every insecurity, every evil act, everything about your life, all the way to the last meal you ate before he started the game.

The game is specifically tailored to make you face every fear, every insecurity, every ounce of trauma you either caused yourself or someone else. Satan herself couldn’t design a personal hell for you this specific. John always wins, because John is the perfect predator. He knows everything about you, and you never even knew he existed. You came to fight, but how do you fight yourself?

Sure, you just cut your leg off to get out of that bathroom. Okay, you cut someone’s skull open with seconds to spare before that reverse bear trap went off. You think you won, but at what cost. We already covered how the traps to overcome were never meant to be psychical, they were mental. His game is simple, sacrifice yourself. This is how you’ve lost before the game ever began.

Mentally or physically, you’re already dead. Well, at least the you John’s assistants kidnapped. You’re changed, scared, you’re completely destroyed.

Either way, you’re going to prove John’s point. If you die, your will was weak, you were never going to take life seriously. You were meant to throw it all away. If you survive physically, you see John has always been right. If you survive, you’re his trophy. His testament that his thesis was completely correct. If you die, you just proved the same thing, in a different way. In the end, the question becomes, how much you appreciate living.

John isn’t some infallible human, he’s a man. A man who was diagnosed with cancer, a man who was sold a bill of goods by a bunch of quacks trying to make a buck off desperate people. He took that and realized how he could take control.

Now, I want to play a game with you. If you’re a Saw fan, comment your favorite trap below. If you’re not, tell me why the franchise doesn’t appeal to you.