Since the start of the 21st century — or perhaps since the birth of the internet — culture has become more accepting of media that used to be considered “moronic” and “trashy.” Any casual YouTube search will yield confident reappraisals of flop-turned-masterpieces such as “Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over” and “Leprechaun in the Hood,” and everyone nowadays has that one supposedly overlooked gem of a film or show tucked in their back pocket at all times just in case the conversational pot needs a bit of stirring.

The tides have officially turned. Bad movies can now be considered masterpieces with enough confidence and a little bit of moxie. So why is it, then, that when I dare to assert that “Saw VI” might be one of the defining cinematic works of the millennia, suddenly I’m stuck eating lunch by myself in the corner?

Ah yes, “Saw.” Beginning in 2004 with James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s original film of the same name, the “Saw” series has gained a sort of cultural infamy for being one of the most turn-off-the-TV-when-mom-walks-in film franchises in recent memory. Built upon the idea of a psychopathic villain who traps their victims in twisted “games” in order to make them more appreciative of their lives, the series’ use and revelry in excessive gore and bloodshed has earned it a spot down in the societal dumps, stuck in the prestigious company of kid-friendly classics like “Fifty Shades of Grey” and “Nymphomaniac.”

Sure, there are points to be made against the franchise. Any series that elicits the response, “Wait, they made 10 of those?” is probably worth viewing with a grain of salt, and it’s no secret that the series’ original run, in which it released a new film every year from 2004-2010, deteriorated in quality faster than you can say, “I want to play a game.”

Lowered budget, a lack of direction and a complacent desire to keep spinning their wheels like Billy the Puppet on his creepy little tricycle kept “Saw IV” through “Saw 3D” — or four through seven — feeling fairly shallow in comparison to their hallowed predecessors. The series’ two failed attempts at branching out with “Jigsaw” in 2017 and “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” in 2021 certainly did its reputation no favors, either.

The original “Saw,” though, needs little defense. Once you cut away all the tacked-on soap opera lore of the sequels, the original film is hard to describe as anything but a lightning-in-a-bottle wonder. It’s a pioneering combination of style, human drama, horror and a healthy amount of wit, one that instantly carved out a subgenre of horror unlike few before it.

Billy the Puppet. The Pigface jumpscares. The reverse beartrap. The Jigsaw piece. The 10-shots-a-second editing of the final scene. The first “Saw” film has enough fresh ideas and iconic imagery to fill two or three film franchises, not just one.

Not only did Wan and Whannell develop a recognizably grimy, gory premise with an instantly memorable hook — most people who use the term “Saw trap” in everyday vernacular have probably never even seen a minute of the films — they also laid the groundwork for one of the most thematically interesting mainstream Hollywood franchises in recent memory.

Building a multimillion-dollar series out of the ideas of mortality and fulfilling our purpose in life — and doing so with a healthy load of bloodshed — is just inherently interesting, more so than the series is often given credit for when evaluating its cultural worth.

Yet, despite every iconic image, quote and piece of music that “Saw” has produced in a twenty-year span, we as a society have arrived at a point where this tentpole of modern horror has become synonymous with just one simple, disingenuous and sensibility-offending phrase: “torture porn.”

While I highly doubt that any of these detractors truly believe that the series’ fans derive any sort of sexual pleasure from seeing innocent people ripped limb from limb, the idea that the series is “gore for gore’s sake” has invaded practically every avenue of discussion about the films.

Popular stories such as that of the theater of kids in 2010 who were accidentally shown the opening minutes of “Saw 3D” (minutes which, admittedly, contain one of the cheapest, laziest and downright bloodiest traps in the franchise) rather than a family-friendly screening of “Megamind” have only elevated the idea that the “Saw” movies are some sort of unnatural, evil stain on modern filmmaking fit only for the unhinged sycophants depraved enough to watch them.

I’ve been guilty of this myself; it took me an embarrassingly long amount of time to realize that Billy the Puppet was not, in fact, the Annabelle-esque villain of the series before I finally watched the movies for myself.

Whatever the true reason may be, “Saw” is popularly viewed as a step too far in horror filmmaking, the kind of movies that you hear about in schoolyard whispers but would never, ever watch.

We can pretend that we only enjoy watching virtuosic, “acceptable” movies all we like, but when we live in a society where “Joker,” a movie about a psychopathic killer’s descent into violence and madness, can gross over $1 billion despite receiving widespread criticism for its reckless and potentially dangerous depiction of mental illness, it’s hard for that cultural high horse to stand quite as proudly.

The “Saw” films, of course, are no paragon of perfect social etiquette, but that doesn’t mean that they promote violence; in fact, the later films in the original run directly question the moral justification of John Kramer’s — AKA Jigsaw’s — mission, deteriorating in quality though they may have been. The flashbacks in “Saw IV,” which detail the circumstances that led to Kramer creating his very first trap, intentionally blur the line between his self-proclaimed desire to help others and his righteous anger about the turn his own life has taken.

Few other film series — much less any as long-running as “Saw” — can claim to have gone as far down the rabbit hole of introspection as the later “Saw” entries. Though, as many detractors will argue, the traps themselves are much less integral to the overarching plot as they were in “Saw” through “Saw III,” the later sequels are still impressively lucid in their ability to provide interesting commentary to a formula that had become so familiar by then.

Of course, not everything works. Outside of the two glorified dumpster fires that were “Jigsaw” and “Spiral: From the Book of Saw,” there are plenty of bits in the series’ so-called “good” entries that are worth wagging a dismembered finger at. Personally, I find the one-note characters and painfully unoriginal plot of “Saw II” to be an utter chore to sit through, and the constant use of law enforcement officials as protagonists starts to feel a bit disingenuous after just a few entries.

And yes, sometimes the blood does go too far. A painfully accurate recreation of an impromptu brain surgery in “Saw III” was my personal breaking point in terms of squeamishness, and some ill-advised traps, such as the so-called “100 Pints of Sacrifice,” a disgusting stomach-turner where the victims must each sacrifice 50 pints of their own blood via buzzsaw in order to escape, take the idea of a bloodbath perhaps a little too literally.

And yet, even when the series is doing everything wrong, its brute-force charm is impossible to deny.

Wan and Whannell’s original 2003 short film illustrates this concept perfectly. One of the very first lines in the 10-minute short, simply titled “Saw,” sees the main character cockily retort, “Living is overrated!” after being told that smoking cigarettes is a bad habit. Of course, seconds later, he’s been knocked unconscious and wakes up strapped to a grisly death machine. Perhaps the greatest explanation as to why “Saw” as an entity works is because that sort of thing is fun.

It’s ridiculous, it’s gruesome, it’s ham-fisted, but above all, it’s just plain fun.

It’s strapping a corrupt judge to the bottom of a giant vat and attempting to drown him in pig guts. It’s making corrupt loaners exact a literal “pound of flesh.” It’s making a gaggle of eager-beaver insurance sleazeballs beg for their lives as they sit on a deadly children’s carousel.

It’s the kind of blunt-force, so-stupid-it-hurts sincerity that is so perfectly baked into the films’ DNA which makes them impossible to not enjoy, at least a little bit.

As melodramatic as that might sound, that bizarre emotional catharsis is “Saw’s” bread and butter. Even as production costs dropped, gore levels rose and character drama started to resemble an episode of “Real Housewives,” none of the characters in “Saw” ever felt the need to break the tension with a self-aware one-liner or a witty retort. If there is one thing you cannot fault the “Saw” movies for, it is committing to the blood-spurting bit.

The games are still going strong. “Saw X,” released on Sept. 29 of this year, is the best possible reminder of just how well Jigsaw, Amanda, Billy and co. still resonate with modern audiences even a full 20 years after Wan and Whannell’s original short. It’s impossible not to crack a smile as a group of evil medical scammers get chopped up, electrocuted and more on the big screen, and I had one of my favorite theater experiences in years hearing a theater full of people groan, chuckle and cheer at the gory spectacle in real-time.

“Saw” is still a trashy franchise at its core, but it’s one with an absurd amount of sincerity behind it. To discount the cultural relevance of the series as nothing more than disreputable “torture porn” is to discount a veritable goldmine of gory fun and 2000s cheese, one that time will be sure to vindicate as one of, if not the single most defining horror franchise of the 21st century so far, and they deserve to be viewed as such.

At the very least, it’s better than “50 Shades of Grey.” I’ll settle for that too.

Kevin Lynch can be reached at lync1832@stthomas.edu.