| “ | This is not retribution. It's a reawakening. | „ |
| ― John Kramer |
Saw X is a 2023 horror film directed by Kevin Greutert and written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger. The film is the tenth installment overall in the Saw film series, and stars Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, and Michael Beach.
Filming took place from October 2022 to February 2023 in Mexico City and is set to be theatrically released on October 27, 2023, by Lionsgate Films. It was then pulled back to September 29, 2023 in order to avoid competing with another horror movie, Five Nights at Freddy's (2023) releasing as the same planned date.
Plot[]
John Kramer is told that, due to his advanced brain cancer, he has only months to live. After a CT scan, he witnesses a custodian stealing from a patient in the next room, and imagines a trap where the custodian fails to turn a dial to break all fingers on his right hand before having both eyes sucked out by vacuum tubes. After seeing John at the window of the patient's room, the custodian returns the stolen items.
John later attends a cancer support meeting, where he meets Henry Kessler, who claims to have also gotten a terminal cancer diagnosis. John later encounters a seemingly healthy Henry, who claims to have been cured by an experimental Norwegian cancer treatment conducted by a group led by Dr. Pederson. A desperate John contacts the doctor's daughter Cecilia, who refers him to her clinic in Mexico City.
John is driven to the clinic by taxi driver Diego, and meets Cecilia and her team—Mateo, Valentina, and Dr. Cortez—as well as a young woman named Gabriela who claims to have been cured by Cecilia, and another patient, Parker Sears, who just underwent surgery. John also meets Carlos, a young boy who lives nearby, and the two bond when John fixes his bike. John goes under for surgery, and he wakes up to Cecilia telling him that he is now cancer-free. Finding a new lease on life, John purchases a gift for Gabriela; however, upon returning to the clinic, he finds it abandoned and realizes that the whole operation was a scam.
Deducing "Dr. Cortez" was Diego in disguise, John kidnaps and interrogates him. He then places Diego in a trap where he must remove explosives wired to his arms by cutting through his flesh, which Diego successfully performs. Jigsaw's apprentice Amanda Young then kidnaps Cecilia, Mateo, Valentina and Gabriela; the four wake up in the clinic, now subjects of John and Amanda's Jigsaw games.
Valentina is tasked with severing her leg with a Gigli saw and extracting enough bone marrow to release a key to free herself. Although she succeeds in removing her leg, she is unable to escape in time and is decapitated by another Gigli saw. Cecilia disembowels Valentina's corpse and uses her intestines as a rope to lure her phone and calls for help, but Amanda shocks her into submission and confiscates the phone. Parker breaks into the clinic, claiming he wants his money back. Amanda restrains Parker while Mateo is forced to drill into his own skull and remove a portion of his cerebral tissue to obtain a key. Despite succeeding, after the tissue takes too long to dissolve, a heated mask closes on his face, killing him. Next, Gabriela is suspended from shackles around her wrist and ankle while being subjected to ionizing radiation and must use a sledgehammer to break her shackled limbs and escape. She succeeds and John orders Amanda to take her to a hospital. However, before she can, the now-free Parker forces them at gunpoint to free Cecilia.
Cecilia kills Gabriela by breaking her neck and reveals she called Parker, who is part of the scam, to free her. She forces John to chain himself in her trap. She hears Carlos outside of the facility, and having noticed John befriend the boy, chains him up opposite John on a seesaw-like trap which waterboards them with blood. Parker and Cecilia leave to retrieve the bag of stolen cash from John's control room; however, a tripwire is activated that seals Parker and Cecilia in the room and frees John and Carlos. John reveals Diego outed all of the scammers—including Parker and Henry—and tricked Cecilia into luring him to the facility. A deadly chemical gas begins filling the room, with the only respite being a ventilation hole large enough for one person's head, forcing Cecilia and Parker to fight each other. Cecilia stabs Parker to death but can only watch as John, Amanda, and Carlos (to whom John gave the money) leave the facility while she is left imprisoned.
Some time later, Henry awakens in a dilapidated bathroom with a new trap strapped to his stomach, overseen by John and Mark Hoffman.
List of Deaths[]
| Name | Cause of Death | Killer | On Screen | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Valentina | Decapitated w/ wire | John Kramer | Yes | |
| Mateo | Face burnt with hot metal | John Kramer | Yes | |
| Gabriela | Neck broken | Cecelia Pederson | Yes | |
| Parker Sears | Stabbed in the stomach | Cecelia Pederson | Yes | |
| Cecelia Pederson | Died in gas chamber | John Kramer | No | Presumably |
| Henry Kessler | Disemboweled | John Kramer / Mark Hoffman | No | Presumably |
Cast[]
- Tobin Bell as John Kramer/Jigsaw
- Shawnee Smith as Amanda Young
- Synnøve Macody Lund as Cecilia Pederson
- Steven Brand as Parker Sears
- Renata Vaca as Gabriela
- Joshua Okamoto as Diego
- Octavio Hinojosa as Mateo
- Paulette Hernández as Valentina
- Jorge Briseño as Carlos
- Costas Mandylor as Hoffman
- Michael Beach as Henry Kessler
- David Alfano as Doctor
- Katie Barberi as Cancer Support Group Leader
- Donagh Gordon as Dr. Finn Pederson
Reception[]
The film received positive reviews from critics, who praised Bell's performance, adding that it was the best entry in the franchise since the first film. On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 80% of 148 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Led by a franchise-best performance by Tobin Bell, Saw X reinvigorates the series with an installment that has a surprising amount of heart to go with all the gore." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 60 out of 100, based on 26 critics, indicating "mixed or average" reviews. It is the highest-rated film of the franchise on both websites, topping the first (50%) and third film (48 out of 100), respectively. Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale, while those polled at PostTrak gave it an 82% overall positive score, with 62% saying they would definitely recommend the film.
Variety's Owen Gleiberman wrote that Saw X seemed "more like a real movie than many of the films in the series in that there's more talking and less torturing". He was satisfied with that ratio but was concerned if it would "pay off at the box office". He explained, "The torture set pieces in the Saw films are lavish gifts of baroque horror presented to the audience. They are, quite simply, the reason we came". He gave particular praise to Tobin Bell, "with his stare of pitiless wisdom". Frank Scheck of The Hollywood Reporter also praised Bell for his performance, saying "None of this would work nearly as well without Bell, whose raspy voice and menacing gravitas are so riveting that he makes Jigsaw's oft-repeated declaration 'I'd like to play a game' scary as hell".
Beatrice Loayza called Saw X the "most well-groomed Saw film to date" in her review for The New York Times. She continues with: "The story mostly makes sense and Greutert pulls back on the frenetic editing techniques that made the older movies look like the blood and guts equivalent of white noise". Bob Strauss of the San Francisco Chronicle called the film "a well-told tale" and praised its character development and plot twists. Wendy Ide of The Observer gave three stars out of five despite calling the film "unpleasant"— in her review she insists "that's rather the point."
Helen O'Hara from Empire gave the film a score of two out of five, positively commenting on the blood and gore, calling it "all present and correct." However, O'Hara criticized the film's main focus on Kramer's vulnerability and human side, adding that it "sits at odds with his awful judgmentalism. Let monsters be monsters." Kyle Turner writing for Slant gave the film a score of two and half out of four, saying "The real disappointment is that Shawnee Smith, who makes a return to the series for the first time since Saw VI, is relegated to mostly doing John's dirty work. It's hard out here for a disciple, and Smith hasn't had the chance to show off her chops as an actor since Saw III. But in Saw X, we do get crumbs of what makes her so thrilling as a performer, particularly one in the horror genre: She’s all id, a tempest of emotion and fully embodied desperation and psychosis."
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