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While the Saw franchise almost never tries to be humorous, that doesn't stop it from having plenty of Narmy moments.
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In general:
- The rotating camera shots and rapid editing that happen whenever a victim is suffering or struggling can look rather silly at times.
- As the movies continue, it gets harder to take the victims' suffering and attempted progress seriously, simply because they'll almost always end up dying or getting their last chance taken from them anyway, which really drops off the intended tragic effect of their fates. The traps' increasingly elaborate structures and exaggerated brutality don't help much either.
Movies:
Saw:
- Leigh Whannell, who wrote the film, doesn't do a necessarily Oscar-worthy job as Adam, this being his first real acting role and having to act out the script he himself wrote, though he is still beloved and praised by fans for doing so.
- When Lawrence begins to cut off his chained foot, the expression and noises that Cary Elwes makes may drive it from terrifying to narmifying for some viewers. It doesn't help that Whannell is completely overacting in the same scene. The fact that it happens at the same time as Tapp and Zep's fight progresses also shows a great contrast between both moments in how they're carried out to give a dramatic mood.
Saw II:
- The scream John makes when Eric breaks his finger. It feels so unnatural to see a Soft-Spoken Sadist old man scream when his finger gets broken, and especially out-of-character when you remember that he survived a car crash and felt barely nothing when he pulled a rebar out of his chest."YAAAAAAAARGGHH!"
Saw IV:
- The eventual status that Eric ends up into by this film can come off as rather unbelieveable for those who have been used to Jigsaw's usual methods regarding kidnapping and hostage-keeping. Although Eric is visibly broken psychologically after being locked inside a cellar for about four months, one may wonder how Jigsaw or any of his accomplices (mainly Hoffman, as it's confirmed that he was the one who brought Eric there) could get to the point of imprisoning a victim inside an enclosed space for such a long time and be able to maintain them regularly on that timescale, as they've never been shown using such a method before (the closest was Jigsaw leaving Adam to die of starvation or dehydration in the Bathroom), nor is it explained any further in later films.note
- In the interrogation room, Strahm asks Jill why she and John split up. When Strahm is left dumbfounded upon her first mention of Gideon to him, Jill asks him about the Eastern Zodiac, to which Strahm lets out a pretty hilarious denial.Jill: Do you know anything about the Chinese zodiac?Strahm: Aw, Jill! No, NO!
- At the classroom scene, Strahm saves Perez from getting impaled by a spike shot out of the crossbow used to set up Morgan and Rex's trap... only for a random photographer to take the shot instead, with her death looking pretty cheap as she's left standing up lifeless. It just seems that the filmmakers really needed to have someone killed by that spike. The police's small Oh, Crap! reaction before just continuing their business doesn't help.
- Just how quick and suddenly Strahm kills Jeff before he can begin his second game to save his daughter. The yelling and gratuitous swearing make it even more silly.Strahm: (holds Jeff at gunpoint) Let me see your fucking hands!Jeff: WHERE IS MY DAUGHTER YOU MOTHERFU- (he raises Amanda's pistol, which causes Strahm to quickly shoot him)
- There's also the fact that Jeff is clearly at a disadvantage, so what did he hope to achieve bringing his gun to bear on someone who already had him in his sights and was giving a clear law enforcement order?
Saw V:
- The screaming sound effect that is used throughout the film, especially when the Pendulum Trap's blade first cuts into Seth at the opening scene.
- The entirety of the Fatal Five's trial. In the first trap, the victims calmly discuss their situation before Mallick angrily trips the timer. After that, all of them talk and argue with each other before starting each test, often with only seconds left before the nail bombs in each previous room detonate. They're never genuinely scared, and there is no tension at all.
- "ANSWER MEEE!"
- There's also the moment John begins to shout at Hoffman when he tries to justify to him why he decided to frame him by murdering Seth with his method. His yelling doesn't sound like he's really angry at all, and it seems more like he's making a discourse, not to mention the calm "To me!" that he says immediately afterwards.
Saw VI:
- The build-up to William's abduction, arguably. At first, it seems like a pig-masked figure is getting close to William, only for it to turn out to be a security guard after the latter shoots him... and then Hoffman appears out of nowhere to take William out. The Narm point comes from William simply standing there without even responding to the warning the guard tells him, and the guard is never seen again afterwards; apparently, his only purpose was to serve as a random decoy. That, alongside the Bait-and-Switch, completely takes away the potential tension the scene could have had.
- William's constant whining when he sees someone die throughout his trial doesn't really try to make him sound shocked at all. His tone while doing so especially makes it comparable to moaning.
- In the Steam Maze, after William gets Debbie out of the maze but is unable to get her key in time before she's killed, he leaves the room and retrieves his next key as if the script specifically directed him to grab the key as angrily as possible. Here's the result.
- Josh — the final victim of the Shotgun Carousel — starts demanding that William watch as he dies when he realizes his fate. What was meant to be a heart-wrenching moment is made... interesting by actor Shawn Mathieson's sudden Batman-esque growling and copious amount of spit being flung at the camera.
- While William getting killed in the end is very sad, considering that he had already learnt his lesson from the previous games he was put through, the twist in the Acid Room that William doesn't get to decide whether he should live or not comes out as a large Ass Pull that wasn't even hinted at the first scene with Tara and Brent, so his death is likely hard to take seriously as well, due to Brent pulling the lever making the scene a gratuitous Diabolus ex Machina.
Jigsaw:
- The traps in this film are so large, complex or large and complex that they can be hard to take seriously for a variety of reasons in comparison to the previous ones. Even the traps in Saw 3D, which are already pretty over-the-top, are much less ludicrous than these.
- The Laser Collars in particular stand out due to it using military laser technology that could even be at outright sci-fi levels with how it's portrayed here. Even a veteran like Logan wouldn't be allowed to use them for civil purposes, and in spite of the lasers' resemblance to the laser tool used by Eleanor in one of the autopsies, it's clear that they couldn't be modified to work as how they do in the Laser Collars.
- Also, the trap's outcome on Halloran was made with very blatant, off-looking CGI.
- All of the traps in the barn game were supposedly made by John on his own, which brings to question how he could have accomplished that when the traps that he drove out in the first few films are much more simple by comparison. Even if he was more physically capable by then, he still didn't have any apprentices or accomplices to assist him.
- Similarly, there's no explanation to how John could have had flatscreen televisions and a Billy with glowing eyes when it's officially stated that the game took place in the early 2000s.
- The Laser Collars in particular stand out due to it using military laser technology that could even be at outright sci-fi levels with how it's portrayed here. Even a veteran like Logan wouldn't be allowed to use them for civil purposes, and in spite of the lasers' resemblance to the laser tool used by Eleanor in one of the autopsies, it's clear that they couldn't be modified to work as how they do in the Laser Collars.
- The Reveal that Logan is the new Jigsaw is initially somewhat shocking, but it's immediately followed by him narrating an extremely lengthy Infodump (alongside some further dramatic monologuing) that completely disrupts the scene. It doesn't help that his tone is robotically monotonous while he's speaking this time around.
- Logan's plan. Framing Halloran by recreating the barn game, down to picking out informants of Halloran who looked similar to the original victims... when no one had even discovered the original game to begin with. YourMovieSucks summed it up perfectly in his review of the film (at the 6:22 mark):"Who are you tricking other than the audience? Exactly who in the film was this for!?"
Spiral:
- To begin with, Chris Rock's acting as Zeke. Opinion over how well he acted is pretty divise, but given that most people weren't expecting him to star in a Saw film (even though he's the one who came up with the movie's idea in the first place) and how he doesn't behave much differently from his comedy acts and roles in other works, it would be predictable that he was going to give out plenty of unintentionally hilarious moments whenever he wasn't being deliberately humorous (e.g. when Zeke screams inside his car out of nowherenote or the face he lets out upon the killer's reveal).
- Schenk's attempt at imitating a Jigsaw voice sounds... absolutely ridiculous, to be exact. It resembles a text-to-speech child's voice pitched down by several octaves, Microsoft Sam, or as one comment put it, a redditor taking the Jigsaw mantle. Not to mention, its emotional tone sounds outright nervous or uncertain at times, even while describing the trap the victim is in or making metaphors.
- It's a minor detail, but a good number of the photos nodding to past films in the billboard scene were just cropped from random stills of said movies with little to no editing, making them rather nonsensical in the canon's context. The ones from flashbacks or video tape screens particularly stick out. Here's a couple of examples, for instance.
- The flashback to twelve years prior to the present, where Zeke and Marcus are de-aged by giving them both unconvincing facial hair. Zeke also has a backwards baseball cap juxtaposed with a regular cop uniform.
- The flashbacks to the shooting incidents regarding Fitch and Pete just fail at reflecting the two's crimes seriously. The escalation between them and their victims is very quick with little elaboration, and they shoot and draw in a similar way to gunslingers in old Western films.
- Schenk's initial appearance at the time of The Reveal is him sitting on a very off-looking table, with a bunch of boxes and bags that look like those used for storing food rather than any potential material, tools or blueprints he could have in hand.
- While the ending is one of the most horrifying in the entire series, the moment Marcus is lifted up shortly before the SWAT team begins to shoot him is a weirdly funny bit; he suddenly drops his suffering mood to say aloud, "The fuck goin' on?" Adding to this is the fact that it's said by Samuel L. Jackson, who's already known for making funny moments with many other characters, so it can quickly disrupt the scene's drama.
- Heck, just the fact that the SWAT team empty all of their rifles on Marcus, who was only made to pose as if he was holding a simple pistol. While all previous cases of officers murdering other people in the movie were understandable enough to take seriously, it's unbelievable to think that a corrupt police force can go as ludicrously far as this to kill just one person.
Video games:
Saw: The Video Game:
- After going through a game that involved Jeff Ridenhour getting impaled numerous times, Tapp calmly asks him "Are you bleeding?"
- You wouldn't think a settings menu would be unintentionally hilarious, but Saw: The Video Game manages to do so. The audio test for dialogue volume is a man screaming for help on loop. However, the voice acting sounds more like something that wouldn't be out of place in Rick and Morty.
Saw II: Flesh & Blood:
- After saving Sarah, Michael asks her "Do you know your name?"
