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Saw X - Review

Writer's picture: JamieJamie

Do you like gore? I don’t anymore. Saw X ruins one of my favourite pastimes, senseless bloodletting, combining it with a surprisingly sensical plot and some saddening instagram filters in its look.

The tenth Saw film takes place canonically between Saw and Saw II but chronologically would be Saw III because it takes place after Jigsaw and Saw. I hope you’re up to speed and ready for a riveting revisit to the original format, with Tobin Bell returning as Jigsaw in quite the personal venture.


We catch up with John Kramer as he gets an official cancer diagnosis and the metaphorical Saw countdown on his life begins. He seeks out some non-traditional treatment with an assumedly Joe Rogan approved, anti Big-Pharma treatment centre. They’re based in Mexico with Cecilia Pederson at the helm of the program, claiming to have helped many cancer patients using her father’s methods. We follow John as he journeys down to Mexico, into a taxi and through the sketchy old factory where they have based their operations. They have set up a pretty slick little operation here though, bright white lights and medically sanitised plastic flaps included.

He goes under for the surgery, waking up in a house near a hospital, just in case any emergency blood transfusions are needed. He gets a free head bandage, drugs and a smile on his face as he leaves Mexico to continue his life.

Whoops, he goes back only to find that the entire surgery process was fake and they had abandoned the slick little operation they had going on. Now, the search is on to find anyone who was involved in faking this surgery, they must pay, in creatively gory ways.

So they do, rounding everyone up in one room and locking them into death inducing games to play. Twists and turns ensue before we conclude our tenth visit to the Saw franchise and a final (?) farewell to Tobin Bell.



Its time for Gore Talk, a beloved and recurring series in these reviews. The gore is done really well, doing its job to make you squirm and grimace at the senseless violence. I think that is my only problem with it though, that it is senseless. I doubt this will matter to hardcore Saw heads, who are there for the shocking traps and even more shocking body horror, they’re strapped in for the ride, not exactly caring who is in the traps.

The reasoning for entrapment is compelling, but nothing really beyond that, and their actions mean you are not exactly rooting for them to survive the games anyway, removing some of the stakes and tension that I wanted to feel.

The aspects of the original I liked was figuring out the connection between the prisoners and not knowing who you were actually cheering for, giving you a bit of an icky moral pause when you find out.


The story itself is done well though, giving Jigsaw some personal stakes in his victims, giving the story a bit more of a tight feeling, not reliant on big complicated plot points referencing back to earlier films to desperately connect the story. The ending got a bit hung up on reveals and tension building that didn’t work for me, but the beginning two thirds aren’t tainted by the slower ending.

They push the early 2000s look in the film with its colour grade, giving it a very bland and gross looking filter cropping up at random intervals where they are outside. I understand the reasoning for it , where you could plop it in the timeline of Saw films and not even really bat an eye that it was made 19 years after the original. It just isn’t something we’re used to seeing anymore so it took me out of the film whenever it came up.

The camera work and editing were also evocative of that early franchise feel, although these decisions worked much better for me, ramping up the stakes in those moments of quick cuts and odd camera angles.


Overall, a fine entry to the franchise, considering we’re on double digits, they’re holding down the fort pretty well. I’m assuming if we get an additional follow up, it won’t be another Tobin Bell entry, which is disappointing but understandable. I’m crossing my fingers for a distasteful Gen Z version where we can watch an attempt at writing a Tiktok celebrity into this universe. I am not confident in its future from this film, but I’m not worried about it either, not Saw eXited, not Saw anXious.


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