Saw X review: The Jigsaw Killer makes a gruesomely good return
Tobin Bell's performance and the film's healthy sense of humor give franchise fans a reason to go back
Film Reviews Saw X
Watching Saw X one might safely assume that Tobin Bell was lured back to the series with the promise that, for this installment, he would get to do everything he ever wanted in a Saw movie. A serious actor, Bell surely knows this bloody franchise will be what he’s best remembered for, and he treats the role of John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, like it’s Shakespeare. Though he’s typically heard more than he’s seen in these films, taking a backseat or relegated to flashbacks while others follow his prerecorded instructions, Saw X places him in almost every scene. By the time Billy the puppet shows up, it feels like a franchise obligation; Bell’s Kramer has finally upstaged his more merchandisable avatar.
Now in his eighties, while still improbably playing a 52-year-old man, Bell may not have many more of these in him. If this is his last, it makes for a fitting swan song, allowing him to play a wider range of moods and moments than the formula typically permits. In the manner of Renny Harlin deciding that, for A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Freddy Krueger was actually the hero, director Kevin Greutert positions John in a similar role here. Typically, the viewer feels at least a touch of sympathy for the damaged souls forced to test their mettle in Jigsaw’s elaborate dismemberment contraptions. This time, not so much. They’re awful people who—at least in horror movie terms—deserve it.
Were this installment numbered like a Disney direct-to-video sequel, it would more accurately be called Saw 1-1/2, taking place between the first two films, before Kramer has fully resigned himself to the terminal nature of his cancer. Inspired by the seemingly miraculous recovery of a fellow patient (Michael Beach) in group therapy, he follows the guy’s advice and contacts off-the-grid doctor Cecilia Pederson (Norwegian former film critic and model Synnøve Macody Lund), who runs a clinic in an abandoned chemical factory in Mexico, which would probably raise red flags for all but the most desperate.
Greutert previously directed Saw VI in 2009, at the height of the Obamacare debates, and it remains one of the most popular installments, for throwing a corrupt health insurance executive into Jigsaw’s chamber of tortures. Here, Greutert draws from a similar well, aiming at the quack cure industry which takes advantage of anti-vaxxers and anyone else for whom the phrase “Big Pharma” is an automatic trigger. The cancer treatment turns out to be utterly bogus, of course, but the chemical factory is the ideal location for Jigsaw to rig up a few traps and mete out surgery-inspired punishments.
The first Saw movie to be told in linear fashion, Saw X sort-of features more homemade, improvised traps, since Jigsaw doesn’t really have the luxury of choosing the time and the place here to the usual degree. They’re still way more elaborate than anyone other than a fictional movie character could rig up, even with help, but this time with more of a personal touch as he opts to explain the situation to his victims face-to-face.
There’s also way more humor here than usual, with one character actively mocking series tropes, and a sickly funny parody of happy montages when Kramer briefly thinks he might be cured. We even get to see a fantasy sequence demonstrating that his daydreams are as twisted as his reality. The best gag of all, though, is a subtle one, and it’s all Bell: when he sees his (fake) surgery area prepared in a newly created room right in the middle of the chemical factory, there’s a brief glint of admiration and mutual respect in his eyes. One brilliant engineer of incision machines in unlikely places recognizes another, or so he thinks.
For casual fans who may wonder, the gore gets intense this time around, sometimes explicitly showing what prior installments only implied, like the graphic sawing off of a leg. Intestines used as a lasso feel more like something out of Peter Jackson’s early splatter-comedies, but the moment adds to the slight air of self-parody at play. It’s not something that derails the stakes, but its intense gruesomeness may elicit laughs as well as dry heaves.
Story-wise, Saw X has no real reason to exist—it’s a self-contained narrative accessible to franchise newcomers, with Bell and a returning Shawnee Smith not even trying to look 20 years younger, as they would be chronologically. The same, however, could be said of many of the sequels—their true reason for being is that there’s an audience for the self-mutilation machines, and for Bell’s memorable presence as a narcissistic moralist with skewed priorities. If the latter is the primary draw, Saw X indulges, delivering an all-timer of a slasher lead performance in addition to more guts and gore than expected. Fans who tune in mainly for the insane timeline twists won’t get them, but otherwise, this is the most satisfying Saw installment since the first three. Also, be sure to stick around for a mid-credits scene.
Saw X opens in theaters September 29
19 Comments
10th time’s the charm, I guess. The reviews for this everywhere are pretty good. I don’t regret choosing to see The Creator last night instead, but I think I’ll make the time to see this as well.A little disappointed this didn’t take place in space, though.
Jason X > Every Saw movie
Goddamn right.
Only Friday the 13th movie I’ve yet to see.I need to rectify this major error in my life as soon as possible.
The scene where Jason is in the Camp Crystal Lake VR and he’s offered drugs and sex by virtual teenagers, then an immediate cut to Jason beating a sleeping bag with human bodies in it against a tree got the biggest laugh I have ever heard from a horror movie audience.There is something about being in an audience at a theater though. The biggest laughs I can remember were at the premiere of the first Austin Powers movie and now I struggle to remember what was so hilarious. It was just Mike Myers acting silly. But people were ROFLing IRL when that was AOL chat lingo only kids understood.
Austin Powers did a good job of packing different kinds of silliness into a coherent story. It was a parody of the 60s and also a parody of the 90s and also a collection of sight gags and also goofy non sequiturs like the peeing scene or Dr Evil recounting his childhood and also a serviceable spy movie. There was something for everyone.
I was just about to mention that scene, although I remember it as he’s beating a co-ed with another co-ed. Time for a re-watch!
That’s right. I think there’s a nearby lamp post that became a tree in my memory. But he’s beating one camper in a sleeping bag with another. There’s a shot of Jason right after they offer him the things he hates most where despite the hockey mask there’s a little head tilt that says “Are you fucking serious?” Then straight to the carnage. I think that was what really got us all laughing. Even Jason was in on the joke.
It was fine. The signature “big reveal” was pretty *sad trombone noises,* after all these years it is pretty easy to guess the twists, and I laughed out loud at the Netflix style yellow “mexico” filter and when they literally walked into the sunset at the end.
The greatest compliment I can give is that I figured out the big twist immediately, but I didn’t care at all because the story was just that good. It also does exactly what I was hoping we’d get with Amanda after the second film, before the third ruined her.
Fair or no, I always associate Tobin Bell with being arrested by an undercover Clint Eastwood in In the Line of Fire
Also not properly appreciating Al Jolson.
Also outsmoking Cancer Man on X-Files
Gwyneth Paltrow’s killer in Malice.
I’ve never seen any of these films, but looking at that picture I can only think of Zozobra.
https://burnzozobra.com/
The only Saw movie I saw in theatres was IV, which is one of the worst ones. I guess I was roped in by the previously-improving trajectory of the series. I can see going to one again though, this one might be it.
I’m glad to hear this one has a decent story because my stepson decided to go see it alone for some reason and I was hoping there was something drawing him besides the prospect of death and torture.I never could get into the Saw movies. Not for some high principled opposition to gore or anything like that, although I do think too much exposure to that sort of thing can awaken otherwise latent sadistic tendencies. It can’t put them where they don’t exist though.I think my problem is that unlike all the other horror movie monsters Jigsaw could be real. No immortal monster is going to chop you up at summer camp for smoking weed and fooling around before marriage. No demonic child murderer will invade your dreams to turn your fears and insecurities against you. A ventriloquist’s doll will never come to life and start stabbing. But plenty of lunatics walk into public places and open fire on dozens of people. Is that such a different concept than a person capturing someone and torturing them to death because they think they deserved it?Not that I know of any crimes inspired by the series or even think that’s at all likely to happen. It’s just that the concept is a little too realistic for me to embrace it as entertainment.
The simple ‘fuck around and find out’ nature of the story has me intrigued, even as someone who doesn’t like the franchise.