morphenominal

Enterprise feels like a house with all the children gone. No, more empty even than that. The death of Spock is like an open wound. It seems I have left the noblest part of myself back there, on that newborn planet.

aside from the obvious, of adam haunting the entire narrative through lawrence, there are so many others. the dead might die, but they continue to have a place in the narrative. as bodies in the bathroom (they just keep stacking and stacking, leaving different impressions on the space, different memories for the viewer). as numbers in the killing total of the jigsaw murders, lingering as little more than another bloody death, another facet of terror, but they still leave holes. 

the dead, perhaps the most of all, act as motivators for the living. examples of horrible fates they wish to avoid, people to save. there’s the dead girl haunts the narrative trope at the center of mark hoffman as a character with his sister, there’s the death of a child as a motivator for john kramer (if you accept jigsaw as part of canon, the death of a nephew as well). the death of a child again in the delon family. there’s the death of a father, that drives a child to murder in brent abbott and the threat of death of another child in the matthews family. 

the man who studies the dead, adam heffner, the mortician who has worked on all found victims of jigsaw and thus knows the secrets of the dead, the secrets of jigsaw, is killed by mark hoffman leaping out of a body bag, hidden among the dead. the dead keep their secrets and haunt the narrative and the living aren’t allowed to know them.

peter strahm’s hand is taken by mark hoffman, a puppetry of the dead, using the dead as a cover, as a scapegoat. peter strahm is there long after his death. his partner, lindsey perez, comes back from the dead, and is killed again for it.

john kramer’s death (along with all those around him: amanda and lynn and jeff) is the capstone of saw iii and saw iv opens on his body. his body holds a tape, literally a messenger of the dead. saw vi has perhaps the most telling line in it, spoken to mark who is already haunted with the dead, as he stands over john’s body: