Saw X review – America’s most blood-thirsty civ­il engi­neer is back

Twen­ty years ago, Aus­tralian filmmakers/​sickos Leigh Whan­nell and James Wan struck gold when they came up with the shock­ing­ly sim­ple con­cept of Saw. Two men with chained feet, two hack­saws, one way out – a bil­lion-dol­lar fran­chise was born. Eight sequels of vary­ing qual­i­ty and one dire spin-off lat­er, the Saw films have become known for their elab­o­rate­ly engi­neered tor­ture traps and increas­ing­ly con­vo­lut­ed time­line, as well as the pres­ence of Bil­ly the Pup­pet and Tobin Bell’s sig­na­ture raspy voice. But for the tenth instal­ment in the fran­chise, Lion­s­gate are tak­ing things back to basics, recruit­ing long­time Saw col­lab­o­ra­tor Kevin Greutert (who edit­ed Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V and Jig­saw, and direct­ed Saw VI and Saw 3D) and bring­ing back the excep­tion­al­ly com­pe­tent civ­il engineer/​deranged mur­der­er John Kramer.

Since Kramer died at the end of Saw III, Saw X is set between the events of the orig­i­nal film and Saw II. After leav­ing poor old Adam to die in a grody bath­room, Kramer is attend­ing a sup­port group for peo­ple with ter­mi­nal can­cer. Giv­en months to live, all hope seems lost, until he runs into a fel­low sup­port group mem­ber who mirac­u­lous­ly appears to be cured. Hen­ry (Michael Beach) tells Kramer he received pio­neer­ing treat­ment from The Ped­er­son Group in Nor­way and gives him their con­tact infor­ma­tion. Dr. Cecelia Ped­er­son (Syn­nøve Macody Lund) explains to Kramer her father was a med­ical pio­neer, but their team works in secre­cy as they’re being tar­get­ed by big phar­ma. She invites Kramer to come to Mex­i­co City for surgery that will cure his brain can­cer, for the rather low price of $250k. For a genius, Kramer is rather will­ing to take a chance on this rather sus­pi­cious-sound­ing trip, but his des­per­a­tion is endear­ing­ly human.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Kramer, the treat­ment is bogus and he’s still going to die. More unfor­tu­nate­ly for the Ped­er­son Group, they’ve messed with the wrong mark. With some help from his old – actu­al­ly, in this instance, rel­a­tive­ly new – appren­tice Aman­da Young (Shawnee Smith) Kramer exacts slow, bru­tal revenge on Cecelia and her accom­plices Valenti­na (Paulette Her­nan­dez), Mateo (Octavio Hino­josa) and Diego (Joshua Okamo­to), teach­ing them the sanc­ti­ty of life and why you nev­er mess with an architect.

In set­ting Saw X with­in the con­text of the franchise’s exist­ing time­line, writ­ers Peter Goldfin­ger and Josh Stol­berg (also behind Jig­saw and Spi­ral) give them­selves the task of inte­grat­ing this new sto­ry with­in an already estab­lished world. Con­trary to what some naysay­ers may think, there is con­sid­er­able lore behind the Saw films, as well as a method to Kramer’s mad­ness. His whole schtick is choos­ing vic­tims that he feels do not appre­ci­ate the life they have been giv­en, or abuse that life by pray­ing on oth­ers. He’s pre­vi­ous­ly tak­en to task loan sharks, drug deal­ers, crooked cops, unscrupu­lous prop­er­ty devel­op­ers, and er, a slight­ly shady pho­tog­ra­ph­er, so the Ped­er­son Group are an obvi­ous fit for Jigsaw’s par­tic­u­lar brand of vio­lent retribution.

How­ev­er, it’s gen­uine­ly fun to see how the Saw Lore is fac­tored into this new film – we glimpse Kramer sketch­ing a trap that will appear in a future film, and there’s a mid-scene cameo from one core vil­lain. It’s nov­el to see Kramer towards the begin­ning of his ser­i­al killer jour­ney, cre­at­ing traps that feel a bit more rudi­men­ta­ry in their con­cep­tion (though a cou­ple are anti­cli­mac­tic in the big pic­ture of the sick stuff the fran­chise has pulled off previously).

It’s also nov­el to see sec­ondary vil­lain Aman­da Young – a loved and loathed fig­ure among Saw­heads – in a more moral­ly chal­lenged posi­tion. As a rel­a­tive new­com­er to Kramer’s world, she ques­tions what they’re doing, and is sym­pa­thet­ic to Gabriel­la, who took part in the med­ical scam to fund her drug addic­tion. While Goldfin­ger and Stol­berg fal­tered with Jig­saw and Spi­ral by tak­ing the sto­ry too far away from its heart (the char­ac­ter of Kramer) they course cor­rect here, and Tobin Bell gives a ster­ling per­for­mance as the man him­self, now a hor­ror icon who sits among Michael Myers and Fred­die Kruger in the Twist­ed Bas­tard Hall of Fame.

Saw X also embraces the humour which fans have long argued is key to the franchise’s longevi­ty. Whether it’s know­ing dia­logue exchanges or just real­ly great line deliv­ery, the great per­il is counter-bal­anc­ing by moments of lev­i­ty, and the vio­lence is so car­toon­ish­ly gory it resem­bles a Loony Tunes episode more than 24 Hours in A&E. At two hours this is the longest Saw film to date, and fea­tures the most down­time between out­bursts of extreme gore – the run­time is a lit­tle indul­gent, which we feel acute­ly in the film’s third act where it is com­pound­ed by lack­lus­tre trap reveals.

Of course this film isn’t going to con­vince any non-fans that the Saw films have mer­it, but in an age of moody intel­lec­tu­al hor­ror where every­thing is a metaphor for trau­ma, it’s odd­ly refresh­ing to watch a film that rev­els in the glee­ful­ly sim­ple. While Jig­saw prides him­self on his engi­neer­ing abil­i­ty and the ​“tests” he sub­jects his ene­mies to, such twist­ed method­ol­o­gy can still be com­i­cal­ly under­cut by a shack­led man shout­ing ​“You sick son a bitch!” at exact­ly the right moment. These films were built for com­mu­nal view­ing and group dis­sec­tion – they are the Fri­day night mul­ti­plex schlock that keeps cin­e­mas alive and hor­ror stu­dios in busi­ness. It’s encour­ag­ing that 10 films in, the Saw fran­chise has remem­bered what makes it so great: a potent blend of true hor­ror, twist­ed imag­i­na­tion, comedic tim­ing, and above all, the leg­end that is Tobin Bell. Whether or not they can write around Jigsaw’s canon­i­cal death to bring Bell back again is anoth­er matter…

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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