Saw X is a lot of things. It’s almost unbearably disgusting, wickedly fun, delightfully inventive and unexpectedly sentimental. There’s also a very real chance that it will go down in history. And no, not because it’s the first movie to show someone getting their eyeballs vacuumed out while simultaneously having all of their fingers broken (well maybe for that reason, too), but because I’m pretty sure it’s the only time a ten-quel has been one of the best films in a franchise.
Indeed, being the tenth film in a series is never an easy task, and the Saw franchise has admittedly leaned back into the security blanket of its massive cult following as of late. 2017’s Jigsaw feels like a poorly composed cable cop show, for example, while 2021’s Spiral committed an even more egregious offense: Lazy traps! How does the Saw franchise recover from such a thing?
Luckily for us, in the comeback of the century, the Hollywood powers that be arranged an emergency meeting, compiled all of the things that diehard Saw fans love about the franchise, and put them into a movie.
Saw X follows Tobin Bell’s John Kramer/Jigsaw after he receives a terminal brain cancer diagnosis and is given mere months to live. John is attempting to accept his fate when a man from his cancer support group, Henry (Michael Beach), offers him a glimmer of hope. Henry has apparently received an experimental treatment that put him in complete remission. So John heads down to Mexico for the mystery cure. The only problem? The so-called doctors are actually con men and steal his money without offering him any medical care. So, John does what any normal person would do: He fills a garage with a bunch of wildly elaborate traps and sets out to get some revenge.
This last part is important. This time, Saw X really feels like a revenge flick, which is what the previous films have arguably always been too afraid to present themselves as. While the Saw franchise has always postured John as a semi-vigilante with a broken—but still present—moral compass, it’s undeniably more fun when we don’t attempt to justify his cruelties, and finally admit that he is just some crazy motherfucker doing some remarkably crazy shit.
Which brings us to the traps. These are, let’s face it, the reason we’ve all watched 10 of these movies to begin with. And when I tell you that Saw X has the best traps of the franchise, I can promise you I do not say that lightly. And, don’t worry, I am willing to back that radical statement up.
The way I see it, the perfect Saw trap needs to pass two simple tests: It needs to be inventive, and it needs to be bloody. In Saw X, the traps are inventive in two important ways. One, the mechanisms themselves are unexpected, well thought out, and well executed (pun intended). But the type of pain inflicted on the victims is itself imaginative, as well. Have you ever imagined what it would feel like to give yourself brain surgery? Thought not. And the “bloody” portion naturally comes with the territory.
And while—I can’t stress this enough—Saw X is definitely not for the faint of heart, it’s not all torture and gore. It’s also uproariously fun, with characters from throughout the franchise making delightful surprise cameos throughout, kind of like The Avengers for people who like to watch dudes saw their own legs off.
The film also tries its hand at forcing in an emotional core, which feels mostly unnecessary and slightly jarring giving the blood-and-guts of it all. But the softer, more sentimental moments do give Bell a chance to present us with a more complex, troubled version of Jigsaw that we haven’t yet seen. And even when John’s forced morality feels implausible, giving one of the more beloved characters in recent horror history his own film was a seriously smart move.
While making John Kramer the protagonist of a Saw film is a welcome first, perhaps the most rewarding thing about Saw X is that it is a return to form—a perfection of what makes these films so great. It’s torture-forward, funny, preposterous, imaginative and puts into practice what the franchise should have learned a long, long time ago: There is no reason to reinvent the saw blade.
Director: Kevin Greutert
Writers: Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger
Stars: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Joshua Okamoto, Octavio Hinojosa
Release Date: September 29, 2023
Aurora Amidon is a film journalist and passionate defender of Hostel: Part II. Follow her on Twitter for her latest questionable culture takes.