By MICHAEL GINGOLD
Starring Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith and Synnøve Macody Lund
Directed by Kevin Greutert
Written by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger
Lionsgate
“My advice: retire,” a doctor says to the cancer-ridden John Kramer (Tobin Bell) early in SAW X, encouraging him to enjoy what little he has left of his life. Putting that line in the tenth film of a franchise is kind of asking for it, though it’s one of several moments in the latest SAW demonstrating (at last!) a sense of self-aware humor on the part of the filmmakers. It’s guaranteed to get a knowing chuckle out of audiences who know very well that John isn’t about to put aside his extracurricular activities as Jigsaw, and moments like this help elevate this movie above most of its predecessors.
It’s tempting to call this back-to-basics installment leaner and meaner than previous SAW sequels, though it’s actually, at 118 minutes, by far the longest. It just feels tighter because it tells a more straightforward narrative, free of the flashback-driven, guess-what? world-building that was often as tortured as the onscreen victims. And while the gore is as graphic and vicious as ever, it lacks the sadistic wallowing of this series at its worst, epitomized by SAW 3D, a.k.a. SAW: THE (ha!) FINAL CHAPTER. That one was directed by the series’ longtime editor Kevin Greutert, who also helmed SAW VI, the best (to this writer’s mind) of the follow-ups, and returns here to improve his batting average.
The script is by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, who previously rebooted the saga with JIGSAW and SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW, and now return to John/Jigsaw’s original story to put more focus on the man himself. That’s another plus, as Bell, with his real presence and distinctive raspy voice, finally gets to hold the center in SAW X, which probably gives him more screen time than all the other SAWs combined. The plot jumps back to the period between the original film and its first sequel, with Kramer still alive but unwell, dealing with a prognosis of just a few months left above ground. His brain may be afflicted with an inoperable tumor, but his devious mind remains very active, as demonstrated by an early trap setpiece that has a fun punchline.
Hope raises its head in the person of Dr. Cecelia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund), who has been engaging in under-the-radar medical treatments to cure presumably terminal patients. Telling John that she and her team have to work underground to avoid persecution by big pharma, Dr. Pederson has him trek to a hidden clinic outside Mexico City. Things don’t go quite how they’re supposed to, however, and Dr. Pederson and her locally recruited staff soon find themselves on the receiving end of grotesque “operations” that pull horrific twists on that old saw, “Physician, heal thyself.”
Giving John/Jigsaw a specific group of people who’ve done him serious wrong to avenge himself upon, as opposed to the often random-seeming targets of the past, allows for more engagement with the proceedings–though John insists it’s not “retribution,” but a reckoning that tests how much they value their lives. It also gets SAW X past the queasy morality of prior entries, which often felt like they were rationalizing the grotesque destruction of victims who didn’t really deserve their fates. The filmmakers manage to balance our sympathies for John with the horror of what he’s doing, while for those who are just here for the mayhem, the design/construction team behind the traps and the makeup effects by Fractured FX definitely deliver the squirm-inducing goods.
There is the usual plausibility issue of how John is able to assemble and create all these elaborate death devices, especially in an unfamiliar locale–even if he is, as he reveals to that initial doctor, a former civil engineer and architect. He does have help in the person of his victim-turned-apprentice Amanda, once again played by Shawnee Smith (who, given harsh makeup and a severe wig, looks like she could be Henry Silva’s daughter). Amanda provides a sounding board for John instead of just assisting him in his dark deeds, as well as a few humorous bits of her own. After John delivers one of his patented portentous lectures to a victim, she quips, “He was speaking metaphorically–he does that a lot.”
Indeed he does, but by allowing John a showcase to give more of those speeches on camera instead of on microcassette recorders, SAW X feels like the sequel to SAW and SAW II they should have made in the first place. For a good deal of its running time, it holds the attention as a deeper dive into John/Jigsaw’s persona while bringing plenty of icky, nasty horror. Once it gets into the final third, there’s a major twist that’s fairly easy to see coming, followed by a barrage of revelations whose plotting depends upon the characters being able to unerringly predict exactly how other people are going to behave. And after one of the first trap scenarios comes to an unexpected conclusion, the filmmakers never follow up on it in any significant way. Still, what’s good about SAW X is good enough that fans will be more forgiving of these lapses than Jigsaw is toward his hapless subjects.
