Saw V: 10 Pints of Sacrifice

Saw V is widely considered one of the low points of the series, but I will die on the hill that it has the best “game” in the franchise. Five people connected by their own wrongdoings wake up in underground catacombs with four rooms, each containing a Jigsaw trap. Each is carefully designed in such a way that if someone doesn’t stop and think, they might assume that someone had to die for them to progress. With each room they lose another member of their group due to a betrayal among them. They never stop to consider that cooperation might be the key to surviving these death games, and that’s why, when they reach the final room, it becomes clear that if they’d worked together, each of them could have survived with the mildest of wounds. But because they’re down to two, the final game could have deadly consequences. A mechanical box sits before the final survivors, and all they have to do is stick a hand inside and fill it up with 10 pints of blood to leave the room. The human body can withstand losing two pints of blood, but five is a riskier proposition. It’s an excellent twist that recontexualizes the entire movie, and underlines that cooperation is better than suspecting and sabotaging your neighbor. If only the rest of the movie lived up to how good the game is this time around.