This year was a special year for Saw X to cross my path. Only one month ago, my mother was diagnosed with two types of cancer, her first surgery causing a near fatal cardiac episode. I suddenly felt the clock begin to tick as my father began to schedule treatments and started to verse me on wills and estates. As horror so often can be, this film would be my catharsis in my grief as events spiraled beyond my control. Saw X is a stunning return to the series’ roots, centering on the all too misunderstood Jigsaw or John Kramer as portrayed by the magnificent Tobin Bell. While the series took a hard turn into “torture porn” as it was labeled after the third installment, we were due for a more introspective look at the game and its master; perhaps it’s the closest, most humanising look we’ve taken at a character that’s long inspired me to stop wishing away my time and to live a life worth remembering. Director Kevin Greutert and writers Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg design a new vision for Jigsaw in this tenth instalment, and give us the most personal game we’ve seen Kramer create since his breakthrough with Dr. Gordon in the first film. A more compassionate, gruesome, and heart racing return, Saw X is the best entry we have seen in decades, perhaps the strongest since its inception. So, without wasting time, I bought my ticket to see the world not through the eyes of police or victims, but John Kramer’s.
Timelines with the Saw series have always been muddled, but this film appears to take place between the events of the first and second films. Unlike previous Saw films, this entry takes a more measured approach, easing us into the story and allowing Bell to flex his cinematic muscles for the storyline, instead of hitting us with a game out of the gate. Opening with several scenes showing his treatment, diagnosis and grim life expectancy, we bookend these scenes with Jigsaw imagining a particularly nasty trap, inspired by a medical device. Outside of his imagination though, the awful truth is being unveiled before him. His diagnosis is terminal, his mortality is on an even faster ticking clock, and we see at what stage we’ve found John Kramer: he has realized himself as the Jigsaw killer, but is very much still fighting for his life and not vengeance – for now. He is part of a support group for cancer patients, still trying to find connections amongst his fellow doomed passengers on this trip to hell.
It’s later, outside the meetings, that John runs into a man formerly in his group, Henry (Michael Beach). Sporting a new scar, the man claims that he found a program that runs off grid that cured him of his stage four pancreatic cancer. He provides John a link, and shortly John is in touch with the polished Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnove Macody Lund), who says that since he is short on time, she would be able to fit him into an upcoming trial in Mexico City. With a smiling, pristine looking staff and witnesses testifying to the groundbreaking surgical and pharmaceutical methods the team uses to treat cancer, John is hopeful that he’s found his miracle. After the treatment, and after John’s money has been taken, he discovers that nothing has been done to cure him, and the whole setup, every last team member, was a conman. Peddling false hope like a poison placebo, John sees these monsters for what they are, and the engineer gets to work designing a fitting new game for those who have unknowingly volunteered their lives.
The stars of the show are undoubtedly Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith, who have reprised their roles with style and ease, developing their characters and backstory with more dramatic intensity and giving us more story on these mysterious game masters. Saw X feels the closest of all the installments to a dramatic film instead of a pain-based chamber piece, with a disposable cast of characters lacking personal histories. Kramer is empathetically portrayed by a patient, carefully emotional Bell; he is a dying man in pain putting his cunning to the test in order to exact justice. Seeing his joy at his perceived cure shattered my heart, as he tries to embrace life freely, and his rage is unparalleled when he finds there was never any hope of salvation. With Smith at his side, even more confident, committed, and caring as the budding prodigy Amanda, she puts on her finest performance of the series.
Dramatic achievements aside, this was a flawless reawakening of the series to invite new fans and give old fans the history they crave and the violence they expect. Jigsaw’s traps are perhaps his most menacing; even more torturous looking devices were created in his earlier days. Practical effects are masterful here, delivering gallons of blood and horrendous wounds. Fixtures like Billy the Puppet and the musical composition “Hello Zepp” make what is made to look like their feature debut, creating the ambience and drama we expect from Jigsaw. These games were not just designed as a lesson, but as an exercise in sacrifice, bloodshed, and agony – in order for one to call themselves a survivor. Saw X may start slowly but it’s like boiling a frog in water, its heat building to a blaze as we approach justice and satisfaction.
A long-awaited beginning, Saw X takes us closer to the players we love most, characters which have solidified the life of the series – which still has a strong pulse, all these years later. What this film says for the future of the franchise, I can’t say. But with positive reviews pouring in and a fandom that is ravenous from the bloodshed, I wouldn’t say Saw has necessarily reached its conclusion. While my sun sets to rise again, this was an experience I’d been waiting years for, and on a personal level, one that has arrived at a crucial moment in my life where time means everything. Savor every moment, choose your allies carefully and love them completely, and don’t resent the timer running for us all; there’s so much to be done, and you never know when the game could suddenly come to an end. My takeaway: live your life meaningfully; after all, we all have a choice.
Saw X (2023) is in cinemas now.