On the whole, the Saw movies are not about story and characters. They are primarily plot driven narratives that serve the grander purpose of the brand, which is to showcase variations of contrapasso torture devices that deliver as much shock value as possible. There’s no modern horror series better at playing this particular game, but there’s an obvious reason why popularity has petered out over the years – which is that people get sick of seeing what amounts to the same thing over and over again. Stagnation leads to death, and while there are some fun ideas in play in the later Saw sequels, the reality is that the films tend to all blend together in one’s memory.
Saw X
Release Date: September 29, 2023
Directed By: Kevin Greutert
Written By: Peter Goldfinger & Josh Stolberg
Starring: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Michael Beach, Renata Vaca, Paulette Hernandez, and Octavio Hinojosa
Rating: R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, language and some drug use
Runtime: 118 minutes
In 2021, Darren Lynn Bousman’s Spiral: From The Book Of Saw was meant to be the title that provided a breath of fresh air to the franchise, and it ended up being failure in just about all respects… but such is not the case for the latest swing: Kevin Greutert’s Saw X. The new title has been sold as a return to original form for the canon, most notably by featuring the return of Tobin Bell’s John Kramer a.k.a. Jigsaw, but what actually makes the film stand out compared to its predecessors is an actual attempt at story and character development. There’s a real effort made to let the audience understand why it is that the psychotic engineer/demented life coach does what he does.
It’s certainly messy – and I’m not just referring to the gallons upon gallons of blood that pour so that John’s victims can understand the value of life. The effort made to properly portray Jigsaw’s perspective is a touch too strong for the movie’s own good (suggesting a little too hard that the character is justified in what he does), and while there is an attempt at constructing a classic Saw twist ending, it’s not one that ranks among the series’ best. Altogether it’s an odd cinematic experience, but it’s still easily one of the greatest from the Saw franchise thus far.
Further helping take Saw X back to its roots is the fact that it’s a prequel that takes place between the events of Saw and Saw II. John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is months away from dying because of the unrelenting tumor that is growing in his brain, and he is willing to do anything to try and extend his life. When he is at his most desperate, he ends up running into an old acquaintance from a cancer support group (Michael Beach), and this friend tells him about a miraculous procedure that is being performed by a place called The Pederson Clinic.
Accepted into the program for the cost of $250,000, John heads down to Mexico City for an experimental surgery procedure and drug trial, and in the aftermath, he feels so blessed to be alive that he plans to give up his Jigsaw activities. As it turns out, however, Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) and her colleagues are nothing more than con artists, and John decides to use his special skills to get back at the people who preyed upon his hope.
For better or for worse, Saw X manages to add a bit of legitimacy to what John Kramer does.
Motive has always been one of the weaker aspects of the Jigsaw modus operandi – with victim choices sometimes feeling petty as filmmakers clearly imagined trap designs first and worked backwards from there – but Saw X is obviously a different beast. The movie is not only unique because of it featuring John Kramer as its protagonist, but because it’s a Saw chapter that works with the morality of movies like Death Wish or The Punisher. While normal people don’t act/react in the extreme ways that John does in his particular circumstances, there is no question that screenwriters Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg are inviting the audience to understand where he’s coming from – and it’s disturbingly effective. He might be evil, but we certainly love seeing evil going after greater evil, don’t we, folks?
There is an ickiness in Saw X’s sympathy for the devil, but it also has an undeniably interesting way of reframing what John does: on a surface level this is a revenge story where a main character gets payback for a wrong that has been done to them, but the funny little wrinkle is that John isn’t hoping any of his targets die; he’s hoping that they live and are motivated to change their ways in the aftermath. With past films all keeping focus on the victims and having John in the background pulling strings, a suggestion of sadism has always most prominent, but as we watch him witness his work up close in this latest chapter, it’s fascinating to see him express a perverse kind of optimism (right up until a game’s countdown clock hits zero and heads both metaphorically and figuratively roll).
Saw movies have always inspired the desire to take a shower following your viewing experience, but Saw X generates that feeling in a different way.
As far as traditional elements of the Saw series go, Saw X is a bit of a mixed bag.
The close look at John Kramer is a welcomed change of pace in this franchise, but it also means that fans looking for blood and guts may want to be warned going in that there are long stretches in this movie (particularly in the first and second acts) where people aren’t testing their pain threshold or seeing body parts maimed. It ultimately works because the peace early on adds depth to the chaos later – but it also can’t be said that the traps overall are the best examples we’ve seen from the continuity.
There is plenty that will make you squirm in your seat or instinctively want to avert your eyes (such as when a character is forced to perform open cranial surgery on himself), but there also isn’t anything with the ingenuity of the classic reverse bear trap from Saw or the slow horror of the razor box from Saw II. It’s a case where audiences who are new to this series and not previously desensitized to the egregious and insane violence of these movies will probably get more out of it than the die-hards, though I can imagine both being underwhelmed by the developments that unfurl in the final scenes.
I can’t say I’m totally sure how Saw X might rejuvenate the Saw brand going forward, as there’s only so much prequel juice that can be squeezed from the canon (let’s not forget that John Kramer dies in Saw III and is given a full-on autopsy in Saw IV). Even if it ends up being the final chapter of this franchise, though, it can at least be said that the Saw movies went out on a better-than-expected note. It’s never going to appear on any lists of the best horror films of all time, but it will regularly place near the top when people rank the installments of the sries.