'Saw X' is Saw-xy

There is a scene in this movie where someone uses someone else’s intestines as a rope, and if that’s not cinema, I don’t know what is.

The Spoiler-Free Version

Saw X is actually, like, a legit pretty good horror movie, with a story and character development and all the accoutrements we don’t really expect from a Saw movie. It’s like thinking you’re going to Arby’s and then learning you’re going to the Olive Garden - okay, so it’s still not Wolfgang Puck, but it’s definitely a big improvement.

The Mostly-Spoiler-Free Version

There is a scene in this movie where someone uses someone else’s intestines as a rope, and if that’s not cinema, I don’t know what is.

The Spoiler Version

Other than Spiral, Saw X is the first entry in the franchise that unfolds in chronological fashion. That might seem like a bummer, because you’d (rightfully) assume it makes the movie less convoluted than many of its peers, and for some of us, the convolution was part of the fun.

But you have to consider Saw X as part of the series in toto: The movie takes place between Saw and Saw II, meaning that the overall story of John “Jigsaw” Kramer is now more hilariously complicated than it has ever been before. For any of this to work, the viewer has to be willing to accept that John Kramer’s wife lost their child, and then he was diagnosed with cancer, and then he tried and failed to kill himself, and then he became Jigsaw, and then he “rehabilitated” at least three people (Logan from Jigsaw, Dr. Gordon from Saw, and Amanda), and then he thought he was cured of cancer, and then he learned he wasn’t, and then he did all the shit we see in this movie, and then the other Saws happen. You guys. That is RI-GODDAMN-DICULOUS. And I mean that as a compliment.

What Saw X does right, first and foremost, is put John (Tobin Bell) and his protégé, Amanda (Shawnee Smith), front and center. In a sense, John has always been the protagonist of the Saw movies, but here, he is the literal protagonist. In fact, they kinda try to turn John into a bona fide good guy, which is just as absurd as when they tried to turn Stephen Lang’s character into a hero for Don’t Breathe 2, except John never raped someone with a turkey baster, so it’s easier to go along with it.

(Speaking of going along with it: Even though this is technically a prequel, they’ve done nothing to de-age Bell, Smith, or Costas Mandylor, who briefly returns as Hoffman. Which I think was the right choice. It’s a Saw movie. You’re in or you’re out.)

Plus - and I say this as respectfully as possible - Tobin Bell is 81 frickin’ years old, and if they didn’t give him the spotlight now, they may never have been able to make him the true star of a Saw film. And y’know what? Motherfucker nails it: Jigsaw laughs, Jigsaw cries, Jigsaw rages, and you buy every second of it. Anyone who has ever dismissed Bell as an actor now has to eat their words.

Not only does making John the protagonist give Bell and the filmmakers the opportunity to really drill down on the series’ most important and popular character in a way slasher franchises rarely do (e.g., there’s never been a deep-dive character study of Freddy Krueger), it also means they have to make his main target, Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund), a worthy adversary, or the story would have no real conflict. Put another way: For the first time, we see someone outsmart Jigsaw, and while, yeah, sure, he turns it around in the end (like any good movie hero would), it certainly ups the drama in a way that having things go smoothly according to his plan would not.

It also allows Saw X to be the first movie in the series that has a “happy ending,” because we’re not following the poor schmuck who just failed their test, we’re following John and Amanda and the little Mexican kid, who just outsmarted some real d-bags. It’s another nice change of pace from the other entries in the franchise.

Amanda also gets shaded in, albeit not as much. I know Hoffman blackmailed her into blowing her test at the end of Saw III, but I’m not clear how much of her prior behavior - namely, setting up games that contestants can’t possibly win - was her following Hoffman’s orders. We get a hint of the more sadistic Amanda (she implies that they should just kill Pederson), and we certainly see a lot of her twisted father/daughter dynamic with John, but we also see that in some ways she’s maybe “too soft” for John’s strict methodology (she tries to help Gabriela, the young drug addict with whom she identifies). In any case, Smith is great. I’ve been a fan of hers since I first saw Summer School on cable when I was definitely still too young to be watching Summer School on cable, and I continue to hold out hope that they somehow figure out a way to make a more Amanda-centric Saw. Maybe they can do one that takes place in-between Saw II and Saw III next.

The traps are BRUTAL, but director/editor Kevin Greutert (who also directed Saw VI and Saw 3D and edited every Saw flick he didn’t direct save for Spiral) scales back the Korn music video bullshit, which somehow makes them simultaneously more palatable and, dare I say, fun. I LOL’d pretty hard when Gabriela (Renata Vaca) managed to get herself out of the path of the radiation machine only for the machine to follow her.

I was 99% sure that when the cab driver/“surgeon,” Diego, talked about ritual sacrifices and decapitated heads rolling down stairs, that he was eventually go to be decapitated and his head would roll down some stairs. And there is a decapitation, but it’s not Diego’s head that gets lopped off, and that head never rolls down any stairs. I think it’s a testament to the movie that I was only mildly disappointed by this (honestly, I was more bummed that we never get to see what happens to poor Mateo’s face after he loses his game).

I was also surprised that Pederson seems to actually be the daughter of some big time doctor dude. Frankly, I’m not sure why she isn’t just the big time doctor herself, since we never actually meet her father.

I’m also confused about Pederson’s fate at the end of the movie. She and her lover/accomplice, Parker (Steven Brand), are locked in a room together that’s filling up with some kind of gas, and they’re told only one of them can survive. We see that the gas eats away at their skin, like that shit in The Rock, so I assumed one of them surviving would involve a fight over a needle full of antidote (also like in The Rock). But no, they just have to fight for control over a little hole in the wall through which they can stick their head. So even though the gas is corrosive to flesh, they’ll be fine as long as they don’t inhale it? Can she just, like, leave the room at the end, or is she now trapped with her head in the wall forever? Maybe this and/or the stuff about her dad will pay off in Saw XI.

I’m glad Hoffman showed up, however briefly, but I still would have liked to have seen Dr. Gordon (Cary Elwes), Logan (Matt Passmore), and Dr. Jill Tuck (Betsey Russell) as well. I was half-convinced they were gonna try and sell us on the little Mexican kid growing up to be Max Minghella from Spiral, which wouldn’t have made much logical sense, but it’s a Saw movie, no one is watching it for logical sense. I will never lose hope that someday we’ll see all the Jigsaws united, torturing immoral idiots as one big, happy family. Wouldn’t that just warm the cockles of your heart?