It’s crazy to think that Saw has been around for most of my life, with Saw X being the tenth entry in the franchise. It’s even crazier when you realize that the central killer, Jigsaw, isn’t in most of the series due to his cancer diagnosis, which he uses to “make-his-wish” of torturing people come true.
For those who don’t remember, Saw (2004) was a low-budget movie with a surprising final twist from the minds of two Australian kids fresh out of film school named Leigh Whannell and James Wan, who are now two of the biggest names in the genre. After the initial film’s success, the series continued following serial killer John Kramer (Tobin Bell), who traps his victims in elaborate traps for petty reasons in an attempt to “teach them a lesson” through the torture. But really, it’s just an excuse to dismember the nameless victims and test the audience’s disbelief leading up to a convoluted third-act twist backed by the now infamous “Hello Zepp” theme. (Yes, there really was a character named “Zepp” in the first Saw.)
Like most horror movies that have reached the 10-movie mark, it was never intended to be a lasting franchise, but the first three entries continue the story with enough dramatic tension and weight. This is largely thanks to Wan and Whannell’s contributions to the scripts and the return of Amanda (Shawnee Smith), one of Jigsaw’s only survivors, who does most of Jigsaw’s manual labor and promises to carry out his twisted mission after he dies.
However, after Saw III, Jigsaw and Amanda were killed off; Whannell and Wan moved on to better things; and a massive hole was left that the producers continually tried to fill with body parts, increasingly ridiculous traps, and convoluted police procedurals that overly relied on flashbacks in order to get Tobin Bell to return for a few scenes. This tedious formula was repeated almost every Halloween, all the way up until the last entry Spiral in 2021, which was advertised as a fresh reboot, but ultimately turned out to be a low point of the series with comedian Chris Rock miscast in the hardened cop role and yet another Jigsaw impersonator. They basically put a new paint job on their shitty 20-year-old car and tried to sell it as new. The moral of the story: Always check the SawFax.
A sex worker gets saved from a sexual assault to end up here. Aren’t you thankful that Jigsaw “saved” you?
So what could they possibly do that we haven’t seen nine other times? Bring back Jigsaw! That’s right; they throw away the investigating cop angle and follow Kramer and Amanda weeks after the events of Saw, even though they both clearly look and sound 20 years older. Also different this time around is the narrative framing device, which makes Kramer the lead protagonist. The last time I saw a horror movie try and fail to make the killer the lead was Don’t Breathe 2. Saw X doesn’t fare much better. Although the latter doesn’t try to make him some kind of vigilante superhero like the former, Jigsaw is still a mastermind that we’re expected to sympathize with because he’s dying and got scammed. As someone who just had his credit card information stolen, I didn’t feel the need to track down those who did it and torture them. And if I did, I doubt I would have the overwhelmingly positive response that Jigsaw has gotten with the release of this movie (I guess my voice doesn’t have quite the same effect).
After being invited to Mexico (shot with the obligatory sepia-toned filter) for an experimental brain surgery and medical cocktail that is promised to cure his cancer, Kramer blindly jumps at the chance to gives his money to this clearly fake medical operation. I initially gave this a pass because the man is dying and desperate. Still, when he arrives to Mexico, they bind and kidnap him to take him to the operating warehouse because of some bullshit excuse of “big pharma” trying to shut them down. And when they finally get to the facility, the operating room looks like one of Kramer’s kill rooms, but he still never hesitates to trust them with his life and money. Once Kramer finds out he’s been scammed, he takes all of the con artists who stole from him to be players of his game, turning their already dingy looking medical center into one of his bloody playgrounds. Some of the best sequences come from the initial kidnappings because they don’t rely on gore to create suspense. But once they get placed in the traps, the audience is subjected to new ways that humans can dismember themselves or die trying, something we’ve already seen numerous times before.
The first act of the movie is played like a straight soap opera about a dying elderly man swindled out of his retirement savings. It’s once we get to the murder dungeon that it falls back into old habits: morally ugly people doing ugly things to themselves while being stuck in one single ugly location. Amanda’s return attempts to add some pathos, but her jet black wig and boyish bangs are a contender for the worst haircut in a horror film since Gale Weathers in Scream 3.
The gorehounds will be glad to know that Saw X delivers copious amounts of blood and gore from the traps. However, the fact that all of the white characters are torturing and killing the brown exploited workers is never dealt with in any meaningful way besides Kramer striking a friendship with a young Mexican boy, who ends up being waterboarded with blood anyway. At a time when real-life saw traps are being used to maim and injure Mexican immigrants, forgive me if seeing them realized in a film wasn’t my idea of a fun time. The fact that the white characters get off pretty easy in comparison only adds insult to the fatal injuries.
Real-life saw traps in Eagle Pass, Texas | Texas Public Radio
I was asked recently what my top five Saw films were and its impossible to rank the Saw films because so many of them are tediously similar and look like shit, thanks to the 2000s-era grime and rapid camera movement. Overall, this isn’t the worst of the series, but I’m shocked at how many critics called this the franchise’s best. That’s like calling Last Blood (another movie that enjoys brutally murdering Mexicans) the best Rambo movie. Sure this has a more melodramatic storyline compared to many of the Saw sequels, but does that make it the best Saw film? Add that to the fact that Saw X delivers yet another lame final twist, being especially reliant on an impossible number of coincidences—like most of Jigsaw’s traps—and Saw X was dead on arrival.
I revisited Seven recently, and it cemented how much the Saw series blatantly ripped it off from the very beginning. Everything from the punishing motivations of the killer and the “choices” he would give his victims to the shocking third act twist is directly aped from Andrew Kevin Walker’s script. The difference is that Seven doesn’t show any of the torture/violence, nor does it try to make John Doe some misunderstood antihero. At one point in the movie, Jigsaw saves a sex worker from being raped, and it’s almost like the screenwriters expect us to stand up and clap when we know he only did this so he could kidnap her and put her in his own decapitation trap.
I shudder when I think of people actively cheering and “yas, daddying” when one of Jigsaw’s traps rips someone apart because of stealing. I don’t believe in capital punishment, but at least there’s some kind of one to one logic to killing someone who has taken lives. Jigsaw constantly says he’s not motivated by revenge, but we see him looking down at his work like a vengeful god for most of the runtime. Visiting someone in a hospital after you put them there doesn’t make you any less culpable and so when the film tries to garner sympathy for John it’s genuinely laughable. As the ever hypocritical John proclaims at one point, “it’s not retribution; it’s a reawakening.” Someone please reawaken me when this dreadful franchise is finally over.
Final Rating:
‘Saw X’ is now available for rental.
Rated R.
(Photos: Lionsgate & Alexandro Bolaños Escamilla)
