Saw X (2023)

Directed by Kevin Greutert

Congratulations to Lionsgate on their momentous accomplishment of reaching the 10th film in the Saw series! Who would have thought that a low-budget movie about Cary Elwes cutting off his own leg could spawn a franchise to call its own? Amusingly, the Saw franchise kind of passed me by, I saw the last one, Spiral, but haven’t seen a main franchise Saw movie in over a decade, so I didn’t know what to expect. So I asked a friend of mine who I consider an expert on the Saw franchise if he noticed any kind of evolution between Saw and Saw X, and the answer was a resounding, “No.” If that doesn’t give you high hopes for the newest installment, I don’t know what will!

Saw X is not quite a prequel, not quite a sequel, a midquel, if you will, taking place sometime between the events of Saw 1 and 3 when our favorite trapper serial killer decides to get treatment for his aggressive brain cancer. After hearing about a miraculous alternative medical treatment available, Jigsaw quickly gives them all his money in exchange for a cure that is totally real, bro. To the shock of literally no one, these people are scam artists, and Jigsaw hunts them down to bring them back to play his games once he realizes that he is still very much dying of cancer.

If you’ve seen a Saw movie before you may notice an odd thing in that summary, which is that Jigsaw isn’t following his typical pattern where he targets people who ‘waste their lives while he is dying’, which quite honestly just makes Jigsaw the biggest sore loser on Earth but that’s another story. This story is one of vengeance, where the big bad Jigsaw targets people who are legitimately awful and no one would have any real problem with him getting rid of, a plot point that makes the entirety of the movie meaningless. I don’t care if any of these people live or die, I don’t care about Jigsaw, who is less of a character and more of a half-conceived idea of someone’s revenge fantasy, and I certainly don’t care about the story of the world’s dumbest cancer cure scheme. If this was part of a flashback or the first five minutes of a movie, it might be a fun expository bit about Jigsaw’s early days, but when it’s the entirety of the movie, the longest Saw movie to date by the way, it gets repetitive instantly.

When I mentioned that this cancer cure scheme is the world’s dumbest, I wasn’t trying to exaggerate, I’m kind of familiar with the fake cancer cure scams that have been going on for decades, and this is by far the least sensible one. Instead of going with an easy and hard-to-disprove method like fake radiotherapy combined with fake drugs, they insanely overcomplicate the matter by getting a bunch of locals to pretend to be doctors and nurses who ‘operate’ on Jigsaw to surgically remove his tumor. How do we know the operation was all pretend? Once Jigsaw removes his head bandage he finds no scar or any kind of evidence of a surgery, something you’d notice pretty immediately. Also, while snooping around the now abandoned facility he finds the DVD that they used to fake his surgery right next to a still-working TV. Why would they leave that behind? Were they 1 ounce over the limit on their luggage for the flight home and had to leave something behind lest they incur the wrath of the airlines?

No matter, Jigsaw can easily track them down by using his police connections. After all, how hard can it be to track down a random drug addict, prostitute, taxi driver, and veterinary janitor in Mexico? Surprisingly easy, especially because they all use their real names during the scam! None of this even touches on Jigsaw’s superhuman prescience, he can always tell what everyone is going to do and what everyone is plotting, even when he has no real reason to know these things. This level of stupidity and lazy writing is borderline reckless, the style of writing you do when you know that no one will care about because anyone seeing Saw X isn’t seeing it because of its clever writing.

I haven’t seen the later Saw movies so maybe this is standard now but the traps don’t seem…fair if that makes sense? Let me explain a little more, what was kind of interesting about the first few Saw movies is that the traps are supposed to be tests of your will to survive, your ability to push through pain, or whatever. The traps here, I don’t think you could survive them even if you win. For example, one trap involves someone having to cut their own leg off. How the hell are you surviving that between the shock, blood loss, and the time it would take to get to a hospital? At that point, why even use a trap? Because it’s fun? Maybe I just don’t understand the lore well enough to answer those questions. At least the traps themselves were okay, and had some unique ideas that reflected who they were used on.

At this point, you might think I hate Saw X, but I don’t. I love stupid movies. The idea that all these people got together and spent this much time, effort, and money to make something that flies in the face of logic will always be hilarious. Sitting in that movie theater in October with a bucket of popcorn in my lap and a nonzero amount of whiskey in my belly, stifling my laughter so that the other moviegoers wouldn’t be disturbed, that was a good time. If that’s your angle, Saw X will be right up your alley. Seeing it at home might not have the exact same effect, but at least you don’t need to hold back your laughter. For anyone else, I can’t see that much to recommend.