The 10 Films That Will Scare You The Film “Saw” Did

"Cube," directed by Vincenzo Natali, predated the "Saw" series and spawned a franchise and a new Japanese remake. In the film, a group of people who don't know each other wakes up in a cube filled with horrifying traps they must try to outwit to stay alive. Natali has since become better known as a director on the horror television series "Hannibal" and one of the directors in the limited series of Guillermo de Toro's "Cabinet of Curiosities." This is a tremendous and intense watch.

"The Platform" is a Spanish film about a government "social experiment" that puts people on different levels in a structure called The Pit, where two people per level only have two minutes a day to eat the food on the platform. People on the upper levels get the best chance at food, and the ones on the lower level only get the scraps and may starve. Some volunteer to gain some advantage, and others are there to be punished for a crime. It's eerie and shows how badly people behave under pressure and how humans are often too selfish to cooperate. Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia and stars Ivan Massagué, Zorion Eguileor, and Antonia San Juan directed it.

"The Cell" also predates "Saw" and is directed by Tarsem Singh. It is a film with gorgeous nightmarish imagery and great performances, especially from Vincent D'Onofrio. It is about a schizophrenic serial killer who traps his victims in a cell that slowly fills with water. An FBI agent and a psychologist team up to use virtual reality to find the killer's latest victim after he falls into a coma. This is another excellent film with similar themes.

Se7en was the second feature directed by David Fincher that stars Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and Gwyneth Paltrow. The film concerns a serial killer who punishes people he believes are guilty of certain crimes based on the seven deadly sins. The crime scenes are elaborate and gruesome showpieces, often where someone has been trapped and forced to make a choice that could result in their survival.

Speaking of a blast from the past, "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" hails from 1975 and is a comedy-horror film that stars Vincent Price and is directed by Robert Fuest. In the movie, doctor Anton Phibes murders in revenge on the doctors and nurses who operated on his wife, who died during surgery. The traps are based on the ten plagues of Egypt, and in the last test, the doctor is asked to operate to remove a key from his son's heart to release him before acid pours on the child. "Phibes" is hilarious and gruesome in an understated way; Vincent Price is fantastic, as usual.

"The Collector" was directed by Marcus Dunstan and stars Josh Stewart and Andrea Roth. In the film, a burglar breaks into a home and finds that the family has been captured by the Collector, a serial killer who kidnaps one person in a house and kills everyone else. As it happens, the script was initially written as a possible prequel to the "Saw" films as an origin story for Jigsaw. Still, it was repurposed as an original film after it was rejected.

"Escape Room" uses the idea of escape rooms, which no one would think twice about becoming involved with, as a way for a killer to lure their victims. Two killers, The Gamemaster and The Puzzle Maker, use a puzzle cube and the promise of a $10,000 reward to draw a group of ordinary people into a deadly game. All potential victims are survivors of previous disasters, and the point seems to be that they want to find out which survivor is the luckiest.

Anthony DiBlasi directed this adaptation of a Clive Barker story about an experiment about "Dread." DiBlasi is better known now for producing films like "The Last Shift" and "Malum." In the movie, two men conduct a fear study that places people in cruel experiments that make them face their worst fears. However, things get out of hand, and Quaid, one of the two men doing the study, kidnaps the project editor and subjects her to a sadistic test. As the "experiments" get even more cruel, things spiral out of control.

"Untraceable" is the story of a serial killer who puts people into death traps while broadcasting the torture and death online on KillWithMe.com. It stars Diane Lane, Billy Burke, and Colin Hanks. The killer's traps are keyed to the number of hits, and it is discovered that all of the victims were involved in the broadcast of the suicide of a teacher. Gregory Hoblit directed this film that took advantage of the popularity of the Internet.

"Pet" is about a man. Seth puts a murderous woman, Holly, in a cage to save her. While she is caged, they play mind games with each other, and after she escapes, her diary, where she writes about her murders, is about to be published as fiction, and she has saved Seth by torturing him to take out her homicidal urges on someone who will never be found. The film was directed by Spanish director Carles Torrens and written by Jeremy Slater. It stars Dominic Monaghan and Ksenia Solo.