Director: Kevin Greutert
Cast: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macady Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Michael Beach
Screenplay: Pete Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg
118 mins. Rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, language and some drug use.

If you’ve been following me for any amount of time, you know I’m a lifelong Saw fan. Not so much for the torture aspects as the jigsaw puzzle nature of the various installments and the mystery elements in the narrative. It’s a great concept, probably a better concept than the franchise has been able to fully take advantage of throughout the entirety. Through it all, though, this was the horror franchise of my youth, the one I was able to pour over year after year, like so many in the 80s were able to do with Freddy or Jason. Even with all that, I had a number of reservations about Saw X in the months leading to its release, but they were unfounded, as Saw X is the best installment since 2006.

Set after the events of Saw, John Kramer (Tobin Bell, Goodfellas) is coming to terms with the end of his life when he discovers a radical new treatment that has ultimately cured an acquaintance’s cancer. He’s able to get the treatment, but when he discovers that he’s been conned, he devises some of his most personal traps yet in order to give these criminals a chance to appreciate the life he so desperately wanted back.

As I said before, I had reservations about this newest installment. I really loved what director Kevin Greutert (Jessabelle) was able to do with Saw VI, but I was pretty disappointed in his directing for the follow-up, Saw: The Final Chapter. The latter film has become my least favorite entry. I’m also a fan of screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg (Piranha), but the last few installments they’ve scripted have been reboots that didn’t go anywhere. I liked the screenwriting in both Jigsaw and Spiral, but I wanted to see how they would ultimately fit into the overall narrative, and they seem like abandoned plot threads now. Connected to that, I worried that going back to the beginning might overly-complicate or mess with an already extensive timeline with contradictory details or fundamentally ignore all the later installments a la Halloween 2018, something I’ve frequently been against in franchise storytelling. All of these elements filled me with trepidations, but I went into Saw X with an open mind, as always.

I’ve never felt like killing Jigsaw back in Saw III was an overall terrible idea, but the franchise has consistently searched for a fix to it, so going back to a “simpler” time for the general audience is the smartest move forward. We didn’t get a large amount with Jigsaw in those first few films, which is where Saw X made a definite step forward. I loved that the first half of Saw X features one trap sequence, and redirecting focus on John Kramer was such an interesting and inspired decision. Seeing John early in his career, his heart not even fully into his horrible decisions, gives this installment resonant character progression.

This is also the first time that John Kramer is the “hero” of the story. Goldfinger and Stolberg found some solid antagonists for him that allow the audience to root for Jigsaw and his traps, which is secretly why so many people are in the theater anyway. This allows John Kramer to be closer to Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker, where we don’t condone his actions, but we understand them. This is something that Don’t Breathe 2 tried to tackle a few years back, unsuccessfully.

Saw X doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, there was still a few twists and turns that I called earlier than I believe I was supposed to (something that the later sequels also suffered from). This film, especially, because of its interquel nature, felt a little paint-by-the-numbers, though the story elements produced by its screenplay make the most of its concept and director Greutert’s attention to detail helped to place this film nicely into the franchise and it will be part of my horror marathon, right between Saw and Saw II, for many years to come.

4/5
-Kyle A. Goethe

For my review of James Wan’s Saw, click here.
For my review of Darren Lynn Bousman’s Saw II, click here.
For my review of Darren Lynn Bousman’s Saw III, click here.