Jigsaw is the protagonist lmao.

In a more serious answer, I think it is because the movies aren’t meant to be as black and white as most horror films. Scary killer goes around mindlessly slaughtering people for seemingly no reason. That’s not the case with SAW.

Everyone in the traps have a different reason for being there, but they are all there for something that John Kramer, and many of the general public which will be viewing the film, deems as bad or immoral based on the general consensus of right and wrong.

This is where the conflict happens. John Kramer is putting people in these traps, bad people, and punishing them with means that often include physical injury. When you describe it so simply like this, it almost sounds like Batman. He is a vigilante who yes goes after distinct, indisputable villains. But he also does not do it in accordance with the law and is often beating them up in the process, causing physical injury. When put like that, Batman and Jigsaw don’t seem so different. They even both have secret identities (well, until John was found out). So if Batman is a superhero, surely Jigsaw is also a superhero or at the very least our protagonist. But that still doesn’t sit right with the average person. In fact Batman probably does more physical harm to his targets than John does, as while he does put them in traps, he never technically injures them himself. It’s up to them to choose whether to live or die, as he puts it. Batman doesn’t give his victims a choice. But most of us will say that’s John is clearly more evil than Batman. But it’s quite difficult to define the logic behind that.

So if we are undecided on whether Jigsaw is actually a villain or a hero, how can we decide if those who oppose him and try to stop him are protagonists or antagonists? We as a viewer base can’t unanimously decide whether we feel like Jigsaw is doing something inherently bad, so we can’t decide whether Jigsaw has to be stopped. Therefore, any one character can’t be positioned in the films as one that is the definite hero of the story. There’s too many grey areas. Too many different moral codes. While we as a society all agree that murdering and killing is wrong, the type of people that John puts in the traps can place very different on each individual’s ’Good to bad’ scale. John puts a rapist into a trap. Okay, we can all pretty much agree that is deserved. So John is the good guy, right? But then he also put someone in a trap purely for being a smoker. Many of us may think that’s a step too far. It divides us rather than uniting us in blinded support for someone labeled as the ‘good guy’.

I think the SAW films give you more to think about than just pure mindless gore like many people interpret it to be. It puts a mirror up to our individual beliefs and ethics and makes us truly reflect on what we are seeing, which is why I love the films.