3. Saw Sequels

Eager to capitalise on the early success of Saw, Lions Gate quickly pushed for a follow-up.

James Wan stepped aside as director and co-writer, with soon-to-be Saw stalwart Darren Lynn Bousman taking over behind the camera and scripting alongside Whannell.

Despite a small budget boost - $4 million this time, the pair still worked quickly and shot the movie largely in one building across 25 days.

As the sequel opens, "Jigsaw Killer" John Kramer (Tobin Bell) has been arrested, but traps the arresting officer in one of his games.

The new film was even more tricky than the first, with extremely elaborate traps and games, plus a chance to get a peek into Kramer's back story and his reasons for all the schemes.

To maintain the surprises, the crew kept a strict policy of silence, even as the script changed. "Yeah. They were constantly re-writing the movie while we were shooting," recalls co-star Shawnee Smith.  "And any re-writes we got, we had to turn in our old pages or we would be disposed of by a shooting squad."

By the time Saw III rolled around (the next year), Bousman realised they needed a different direction.

"Saw III is a much different film. I think it's a much stronger film when we wrote the characters.

"It's funny, I watched all three for the first time two days ago in its whole entirety with the print master, which is when the audio and visuals are married. It was amazing, because you actually care for these characters.

"We're not focusing on eight people running around a house screaming. The primary focus on Jigsaw and Amanda and the two new characters we've introduced and you get attached to them a lot quicker.

"Saw III is by far the most violent of them all. Saw II was my first movie and I was trying to make sure it was successful in grossing people out. I think this grosses people out a lot more, but that wasn't the focus of the movie.

"This year it was about the story and the characters. When you're going into a third movie, you have everything against you because you're the third movie into a franchise."

On to Saw IV, and by then,  the challenge to make the films different was really beginning to bite.

"I think the Saw films have become kind of known for their twists and 'did we get you?' This entire movie is a lead up to 'did we get you?'", says Bousman.

"I think that was the hardest thing this year, because this is my last Saw film and knowing that I had to do a big 'did we get you?' And the whole movie was kind of conceived around what we were going to do in the last 20 minutes. As well as thinking about future, what the future leaves.

"In Saw III, I thought it was my final one and I said, 'Kill everybody! Kill them all!' and I went in and I killed Tobin and I did everything, and now I'm like, 'Alright, I'm back. Everyone's dead, what am I gonna do?'

"And so, we had to think ahead this time. Kind of turning the franchise over to David Hackl, he had to go somewhere with it. So we had to think about these characters we're introducing, where will they be, where will they go to.

"So not only thinking about the future, but thinking about the past as well. I think that was the hardest thing about doing Saw IV. Every film has its own message and theme.

"I think, where I kind of approached it, it sounds screwed up, but as a love story between Jigsaw and Amanda, and a lot of people kind of looked down on it, saying it was the most violent and whatever, and that you just did gore for gore's sake, where we really approached the whole thing as a story between Jigsaw and Amanda in this kind of protege-mentor love relationship they had."

For Saw V, the first film's production designer (and second unit shooter for the other three) David Hackl was handed the reigns, with new writers taking over the story.

"Mainly the thing I wanted to do was to play on the relationships, certainly with Hoffman and Jigsaw, you can see more of that in there," says Hackl.

"Personally I get drawn into a film more by the dramatic moments. I don’t think any of us are that drawn into a movie, sucked into the suspension of disbelief more because of just a car chase.

"It’s the relationships. We get drawn into more of that car chase because of the people and the relationships. That’s why we’re drawn into a movie because of the human relationships.

"I wanted to do more of that and I also wanted to give the fans more back story of how this all happened. So even with myself, working on all of these movies for all of these years, I had questions myself.

"How does one develop and perpetrate these traps? You know, I wanted to answer that for myself just as much as anybody. I am probably one of the biggest fans of the franchise, I don’t know if that will help…"

It seemed to - the Saw franchise continued to be profitable and benefited from fast turnarounds that meant one could arrive every year around Halloween, becoming something of a tradition, not to mention a box office champ.

With the release of Saw V, the series looked on track to become the highest-grossing horror franchise of all time.

But it wasn't until a certain filmmaker named Eli Roth launched Hostel in 2005 that the genre truly got its title…

Next: A Genre Defined: Hostel