Saw (2004)

James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s Saw sliced its way into horror history with intelligence and shock value. The film follows two strangers chained in a grimy bathroom, forced to play a deadly game devised by the Jigsaw Killer — a moral mastermind testing his victims’ will to live. Made for just $1.2 million, it became a global phenomenon and birthed one of horror’s most enduring franchises. Wan said he wanted to “trap people in fear and force them to confront what they’d do to survive.”