James Wan Wants His New SAW Movie to Mess With Your Head Again Instead of Just Drench You in Gore
James Wan is ready to drag Saw back into darker, meaner territory, and this time he’s less interested in how much blood hits the floor and more focused on how deeply the movie messes with your head.
With Saw 11 now being developed under his watch, the original co-creator wants the franchise to feel unsettling again in the way it did when it first shocked audiences in 2004.
Wan recently explained that returning to the franchise has given him a rare reset creatively. Speaking with Letterboxd, he said:
“For me to finally come back to it, I feel I have probably the freshest outlook. I feel I can come back to it with a new perspective, whilst knowing that with this next movie I want to hark back to the spirit of the first movie.
“One of the things I really want to do with this next Saw is make it scary again. I want to make a scary Saw—not just gory, but psychologically scarring, like what Leigh and I did in the first movie.”
That vision is a pretty big shift for a series that’s steadily cranked up the violence with each sequel. When Saw first arrived, it was mostly confined to a single grim location, with one major trap and a heavy focus on the mental and emotional torture endured by its characters.
Compare that to Saw X in 2023, where John Kramer unleashed seven elaborate traps, and it’s easy to see how the franchise drifted toward spectacle over suspense.
Wan knows that history better than anyone. After directing the first film, written by Leigh Whannell, the duo helped shape the story for the next two installments. But Wan admits his hands-on involvement faded quickly.
He’s said he has “not been involved in this franchise to this degree, to this depth, basically since the first movie.” Even though his name appeared as an executive producer for several sequels after the series partially moved under Lionsgate, his creative influence was limited.
Over the years, Wan went on to launch entirely new horror juggernauts, including The Conjuring and Insidious, while Saw kept evolving without him. That changed in 2025 when Blumhouse acquired Twisted Pictures’ half of the franchise. Since Wan’s own company, Atomic Monster, operates under Blumhouse, the series effectively came home.
With that reunion comes a clear goal. Wan wants to respect longtime fans while shaking things up enough to make Saw matter again for people who didn’t grow up with it.
“I want to honor what people have come to love about the franchise, whilst trying to do something fresh and new that we haven’t seen before,” he said. “
This next movie would be the eleventh installment, and there have been lots of films in this world. We need to do something different in order to reach out to a new generation that didn’t grow up with it.”
There’s no release date yet for Saw 11, but Wan’s comments suggest a leaner, more unsettling experience is on the way, which I’ll be looking forward to!