Saw X: Review
These "traps" are just my fantasy football league's punishments
It’s fun to complain about the cinematic universe that Marvel created and its pernicious reach into nearly every genre in this era’s event cinema. Even The Conjuring (2013) (an at-the-time one-off horror story) has created a “Conjuring-Universe” that supplies us with a steady stream of awful horror movies post-The Conjuring 2 (2016). DC is simply a diet MCU and aside from Rogue One (2016) the Star Wars franchise hasn’t put out a good film since Return of the Jedi (1983). It’s hard to sustain commercial momentum with artistic quality, but maybe the MCU isn’t all to blame.
Long before Iron Man (2008), horror movies had this market cornered. The Nightmare on Elm Street franchise has nine films, the Friday the 13th franchise has twelve, and Halloween has a whopping thirteen. Some of these are sequels, some are remakes, and some are really embarrassing crossovers. One of the more recent horror franchises gone astray just released its tenth installment: Saw X.
Admittedly, I’ve only ever seen the first two Saw movies, but I’ve watched probably every trap on YouTube. The first film catapulted James Wan’s directorial career and is a creatively disturbing gore flick both in how the victims find their demise as well as the narrative behind its infamous killer, Jigsaw. Saw II (2005) was a solid sequel with a great twist ending that brings a familiar face from the first into a new light.
This is actually 2023’s second tenth installment of a franchise, the other being the similarly named Fast X, the tenth installment of The Fast and the Furious franchise and easily my least favorite movie I’ve seen this year, so far. But while Fast X and its predecessors relied on fast and furious car driving to be interesting, the Saw movies have always had a poignant moral question at the core of their killer’s actions. It’s what makes them stand out among other “torture-porn” (not my term) horrors and delivers the best part of any Saw movie: John Kramer.
Tobin Bell kills it once again as the observantly engineering psychopath John Kramer aka “Jigsaw.” Bell’s quiet, raspy voice perfectly fits the mindset of Kramer and the kind of person who would believe he’s not really killing his victims, but rather, giving them a choice. One limitation of the Saw films is the choices of the majority of Jigsaw’s victims are typically either to die horrifically or self-induce immense bodily harm to avoid such a grisly ending. These “choices” also always greatly outweigh the crimes of the victims (drug dealers and petty thieves are typically good choices for Jigsaw). Then again, that is why he’s the villain, reminding me of a time when my friend mentioned Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) could have simply doubled the resources in the universe rather than eliminating half of life. True, but then he wouldn’t be the villain.
Saw X is not a sequel, but rather a film that chronologically fits in between the first and the second film. John Kramer is given just a few months left to live with brain cancer but finds a possibly life-saving experimental surgery. The too-good-to-be-true opportunity turns out to be exactly that sparking Jigsaw’s games to begin with our medical fraudsters.
In this way, the punishments make a lot more sense. These victims are not strangers to Jigsaw like in other films. They scammed him. This time it’s personal and Jigsaw is looking simply for retribution. The film also allows some level of sympathy for a few of the fraudsters as they appear complicit in a scam they didn’t quite fully realize, which of course means nothing to Jigsaw, but to a sane mind garners at least some level of sympathy.
The nature of the games in this film also fits this theme of revenge. In other films, players would have to complete some kind of horrific bodily task, like dig out a key from inside someone or opening a safe using a candle while covered head-to-toe in lighterfluid. But in Saw X, players must give up parts of their body to be free.
It’s grisly, grotesque, and disturbing, but like any good Saw trap, they’re impossible to look away from. Director Kevin Greutert builds upon Wan’s foundation of making these scenes as thrilling and down-to-the-wire as possible with victims typically needing just a couple more seconds to complete their task. The psychological breakdown of the players also keeps you glued to the screen and is the main driver behind any Saw movie’s horror.
As a tenth installment, Saw X does a surprisingly great job at fitting the bill. The third act gets a little loose with several different twists and turns coming in rapid succession. By the end, you might be raising an eyebrow at how characters get out of certain situations, but for the first two acts, Saw X makes the most of its 118-minute runtime. Greutert takes a step back and spends the first act examining the man himself, John Kramer, and provides a more humanistic lens of the crafty psychopath. Bell is quiet and patient in this part of the film making his realization and turn hit much harder than if we jumped straight into the traps.
No performance stands out in the support, but anything that’s not being done really well is at least being handled serviceably. Like any Saw movie, my least favorite part is still present, that being a final montage that literally explains the plot twists of the story, but of course that’s par for the course in Saw and inherent in its style, so knowing what I was getting into I can only be so mad.
That essentially sums up my whole feeling about Saw X. Any small things I had issues with were things I knew coming in would be present, and anything that could have seriously made the film go awry was for the most part handled very well. It’s not changing anything in the horror genre or adding new life to this battered franchise, but if you’re looking to get that violent horror itch scratched this October, Saw X is far from your worst option.
Final Thought:
7.2