With a mix of trepidation and enthusiasm the Horror Honey and I went to see the most recent installment of the Saw series, Saw X. This entire month of October I have done an entire Saw series re-watch. Actually not all were re-watches Spiral was new to me and for the life of me I know I watched Jigsaw but I couldn't recall a thing about it so that felt new as well. Other than one other couple in the theater, we had the entire place to ourselves. Once again Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, and Costas Mandylor return as John Kramer, Amanda Young, and Detective Hoffman. This film occurs after Saw and before Saw II in the chronology of the story. It's been given the cute label of an inbetweenquel. Yeah, they're just making shit up now! John's tumor is getting worse and he only has a few months to live. During a cancer support meeting he meets a man named Henry, Michael Beach from Patriot's Day and One False Move who is dying of stage four pancreatic cancer. A few weeks later John sees Henry again looking healthier than he had before.
Henry tells John about an experimental treatment he received from a Norwegian doctor. John is able to get in contact with the doctor's daughter and she agrees to treat him in their Mexico facility. John is taken by taxi from the air port to the clinic and meets Cecilia (Synnøve Macody Lund from The Girl in the Spider Web) and her team which includes Mateo (Octavio Hinojosa Martínez) an anestesiologist, Valentina (Paulette Hernández) a medical tech, and Dr. Cortez (Joshua Okamoto) who is to perform surgery on John. While there John also meets a girl named Gabriela (Renata Vaca) who Cecilia has cured as well as another patient named Parker Sears (Steven Brand from Mayhem and The Scorpion King) who just recently had surgery and treatment for throat cancer. After the surgery to remove the tumor John begins his recovery and he is given a bunch of drug cocktails to take two a day for a week and he should be fine. He asks Cecilia what else there is to do and she tells him to go live his life. Which she hopes will be long and happy. Soon after, John realizes the entire thing was a scam, in fact he never ever received surgery. He decides to get his revenge on them all with the help of Amanda and Detective Hoffman.
Well well well, we get a Saw film with a lot of character development and a ton of story. Sure there's traps and "games" to play but they all come in the second half of the film. One trap we do see early on but that actually ends up being just a daydream John has about playing a "game" with a hospital orderly who has sticky fingers. I mean for the most part I always root for John and his traps but this one really gives you a reason to root for him! I have to say this is not the movie I was expecting. Half of it is unlike anything we have seen in a Saw film before but when the traps begin, holy crap are they brutal. This might be the most cringe film in the series. There's gore, brutality, and violence that we are used to and I almost want to say this is the most we have seen of those aspects in any Saw film but I'm not sure. It's close if it's not I will say that. Kevin Greutert directs here again after also directing Saw VI and Saw 3-D. Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger who also wrote Jigsaw and Spiral also served as writers here. Saw X was originally to be made earlier, when Spiral was made, but this was moved back when Chris Rock went with the Spiral script instead.
Ten films in and we have the most John Kramer in any Saw film to date here in Saw X. Also for the first time Bell added some lines into the script, putting some extra dialogue into the finished product. Seeing as how several years has passed and Bell and Smith are older now they considered de-aging the characters but last minute decided to go with them as is. All in all this may be the most polished film in the entire series. While there are less traps, each one seems so much more severe than some others and let's admit it, the traps are what we are there for. Saw X reinvigorates the franchise and makes me wonder where they will go next because there will be another one, of that I'm sure. With a budget of $13 million compared to a box office total (as of this writing) of just over $60 million the numbers are heading in the right direction in order to receive a sequel order. Surprisingly this installment has received the best grades of all the Saw films from critics. While I won't go that far, I will say it is the best since Saw III and I will give it three and a half scam artists out of five. Again without quarter star grading, I bump it to three and a half but second guessing myself this might be a bit lower of a score than Jigsaw making this, IMO, the fourth best film in the series. I do recommend this to Saw junkies and it also might make a good jumping on point for new fans of the trap king.
Happy Halloween!
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