Saw X opens in theaters September 29. This review is part of our coverage of Fantastic Fest 2023.
“Would you like to play a game?” has now been the impetus for 10 chapters in the book of Saw. The game may not always be good, and the timeline may be convoluted as hell, but nearly 20 years after we first saw Cary Elwes’ Lawrence Gordon hack off his own foot, director Kevin Greutert and writers Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger deliver what ends up being the series’ best entry yet with Saw X. That statement comes with a major caveat: Whether or not you feel the same will depend wholly on what you want out of a Saw movie.
After two decades of playing The Jigsaw Killer, Tobin Bell is finally getting the opportunity to really star in a Saw film. And when you see that performance, you’re going to be asking why the hell it’s taken so long. Bell is absolutely the emotional core of Saw X: It opens with his character, John Kramer, learning he has mere months to live. (Not news for franchise viewers, but immediately pertinent to what will unfold in the film.) Nearing the end, Kramer joins a cancer support group and meets a man named Henry Kessler (Michael Beach) who will later tell him about a miracle cancer cure that saved his life. Given that Saw isn’t a fantasy story, you can imagine how that whole thing pans out.
It’s that hope that adds an extra level of depth to Saw X. The point here is never to portray Kramer as some kind of righteous vigilante – 10 movies in, we know full well who he is. Instead, it’s to illustrate the real evils of the world alongside the fictional character’s wrongdoings. And boy, are the people who find themselves in his snare in this movie just unfathomably freaking despicable. Still, Saw X isn’t just about exploring how deplorable humans can be – it’s also about the power of hope and what kind of hell you can unlock when you betray it. (And yeah, OK, the absolutely wicked kills that come along when you screw with the wrong man.)
Saw X features seven traps, each of them more gnarly than the last. Said kills are spaced throughout the runtime, including one very early on to satiate those itching for a good death; things really start to hit the fan in the third act. It’s also worth mentioning that one of the traps is merely just OK – but before you get disappointed, remember that everything always goes according to plan for John Kramer, the former engineer turned death dealer. (Yeah, yeah, except for the brain cancer part, but that’s the whole point.)
While the point isn’t to make Kramer seem like a righteous man, Saw X leans harder into his moral code than ever before. What he does and how he does it is not right, but it is what makes Jigsaw an interesting horror character. If you’re innocent, you don’t have to fight for your life. Previous Saw films falter when their questions about the true meaning of “innocence” get a little wibbly (and when Kramer’s acolytes get a little too trigger-happy – but welcome back to Shawnee Smith’s Amanda anyway), but Saw X isn’t interested in shades of gray, and that serves its purposes just fine here.
In that regard, the real secret weapon of Saw X is Synnøve Macody Lund’s Cecilia Pederson. The point of these films may not be to get you to root for Jigsaw, but I gotta tell you – I’d take him on my team over this absolute ghoul any day. Just a nasty, wicked, unconscionable thing, who tests John’s code more than anyone ever before. Saw X won’t be winning any technical awards, but the story here, and this brief war between two evils, is the business.
Whether or not you’ll be into Saw X fully depends on what you’re looking for from this franchise. If you just want back-to-back gnarly kills with very little story, you’re going to have less fun with this one. But if you think Saw shines brightest when it’s showcasing the evils of man while another evil man helps them torture themselves (often to death), you’re going to have a good time.
