My Review of Saw X (2023)

 

Written by Peter Goldfinger And Josh Stolberg

Directed by Kevin Gruetert 

John: "Hello, everyone. It's time to play a game. You all pretended to cure me. But what I have planned for each of you, is very real."

In nearly two decades, this franchise has veered into being often needlessly gruesome and also presenting a morally complicated anti-villain main character in John Kramer/Jigsaw (Tobin Bell). He's a complex guy, isn't he?

Anyways with the previous benching the character completely, this tenth installment went for the opposite idea. If ever there was a Saw movie where John Kramer was front and centre to proceedings, it was this one. It's also the best movie in the franchise.

Having cancer has been a huge thing with John's character and in this movie, he was given the opportunity to be cured. Naturally he took it and believed that Dr Cecelia Peterson (Synnøve Macody Lund) could help him. He was more than willing to part with his cash and go to Mexico for the cure.

Of course it turned out that Cecelia and various others, including the likes of Diego (Joshua Okamoto), Mateo (Octavio Hinojosa), Valentina (Paulette Hernández) and Gabriela (Renata Vacation) had all scammed him. John wanted his usual bout of revenge and justice and Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith) was more than willing to help. This movie was also Amanda at her most likable. John too for that matter.

In fact, I'd almost go as far as to say that John and Amanda were closer to even being heroic. Especially when you look into how absolutely despicable Cecelia turned out to be as a character. She might be the nastiest character ever introduced into the franchise and her boyfriend Parker Sears (Steven Brand) wasn't any better.

As bad as John and Amanda, even they wouldn't intentionally kill a child. Cecelia was more than willing to harm poor Carlos (Jorge Briseño) when she wasn't willing to betray Parker to try and save herself. There was something immensely satisfying in seeing her comeuppance play out the way it did.

- A mid credit scene had Kramer and Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) putting Henry (Michael Beach) in a device as revenge for his role in scamming John.

- John actually fell victim to one of his own traps in order to save Carlos. I'm surprised it took that long for such a thing to happen.

- Standout music: José Miguel Ortegon's Mascara del Diablo.

- Chronology: Predominantly set in Mexico and within the same timeframe as the first two movies.

I think Saw X might be the best movie in the whole franchise. I thought it was a brilliant use of John, Amanda and even Mark as character and Cecelia was such a vile piece of work as a character. The change of location also helped too.

Rating: 8 out of 10