Saw X is a 2023 American horror film and the tenth installment in the Saw film series, that serves as both a direct sequel to Saw (2004) and prequel to Saw II (2005). It is directed and edited by Kevin Greutert and written by Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg. The film stars Tobin Bell and Shawnee Smith reprising their roles from the previous films, with Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, and Michael Beach. Set between the events of the first two films, John Kramer (Bell) travels to Mexico in hopes an experimental procedure may cure him, later discovering a scam within the operation. As retribution, he kidnaps those responsible and subject them to his trademark death traps.
Originally intended to be the ninth installment of the series, the plot of the film was postponed in favor of a spin-off titled Spiral, from a story pitched by Chris Rock. A tenth installment was reported to be in development with Twisted Pictures in April 2021. Stolberg and Goldfinger, writers for the previous two entries of the series, announced they had completed the script in December 2021. Greutert, who had directed two other installments of the series and edited six, was also confirmed as the film's director. Charlie Clouser, who had composed all the previous Saw films, returned to compose the score. Filming took place from October 2022 to February 2023 in Mexico City.
Saw X was theatrically released by Lionsgate on September 29, 2023. It received generally positive reviews from critics; many described it as the strongest entry since the first film and singling out Bell's performance for praise.
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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 him in a trap where he must turn a dial to break all five fingers, or have both eyes sucked out by vacuum tubes, with the custodian failing to do so in time. After the custodian sees John at the window of the patient's room, he returns the belongings back to the patient.
After this, John attends a cancer support meeting, where he meets Henry Kessler, who claims to have also gotten a terminal diagnosis. A physically destitute 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 Pederson, 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 informing 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 and her team; the four wake up in the clinic, where John and Amanda greet them as the subjects of Jigsaw's latest game.
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Valentina is tasked with severing her leg with a Gigli saw and extracting enough bone marrow to release a key and free herself. Although she succeeds in removing her leg, her time runs out and she is decapitated. Cecilia is able to call 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 another key. Despite succeeding, after the tissue takes too long to dissolve, a heated mask closes on his face and melts it, killing him. Gabriela is next and 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 gave up Parker as one of the scammers, and he 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. 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.
Development
In April 2021, a tenth film installment to the Saw franchise, titled Saw X, was reported to be in development with Twisted Pictures. Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, writers for the previous two entries of the series, Jigsaw (2017) and Spiral (2021), confirmed the script was completed in December 2021. Producers Mark Burg and Oren Koules had planned the story of Saw X since 2018, but plans for the film were put on hold when Michael Burns, the Vice President of Lionsgate, met with Chris Rock in Brazil and approved his pitch for Spiral. That film's box office under-performance led Burg and Koules to go back to the franchise's roots for its tenth installment and make the story they had planned. In August 2022, Bloody Disgusting reported the film would be directed by Kevin Greutert, who edited most of the previous installments, and directed Saw VI (2009) and Saw 3D (2010).
Casting
In October 2022, Tobin Bell was confirmed to reprise the role of John Kramer / Jigsaw. Greutert told Empire that Bell is featured in the film more than any other in the series. Bell was also involved in the film's script and post-production, coming up with extra dialogue that was incorporated into the story after shooting concluded. In December 2022, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand and Michael Beach joined the cast, along with Renata Vaca, Paulette Hernandez, Joshua Okamoto and Octavio Hinojosa. Shawnee Smith reprises her role as Amanda Young. While never officially announced, Costas Mandylor returned with a surprise cameo of his role as Mark Hoffman, though his return was implied by his voice present in the trailer. Greutert told Entertainment Weekly that this cameo was "the most fan-servicey thing" he has done.
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Filming
Mexico City, where the film was shot.
On a budget of $13 million, principal photography took place on location in Mexico City from late October 2022 to February 2023. The trap designs were more complex than in previous installments, so the filming schedule was split into two parts—three weeks in November and three weeks in January. Greutert told SFX, "We had to make so many prosthetics and machines, and over Christmas, we spent the entirety of it figuring this stuff out".
At the Midsummer Scream 2023 convention, cinematographer Nick Matthews said they wanted to pay homage to the earlier Saw films. He explained, "I think for Kevin and I, it was really important that we were able to pay homage to all the early films, we love that the early films are 1:85 (ratio), we love that they're textural, that they're gritty, that there's these really bold, yellow color palettes, and we want to do our work to hearken to that, with pervasive darkness, and really throwing the audience subjectively right into this graphic, gritty world". Production designer Anthony Stabley looked back at the color palette from those mid-2000s films and ensured that all technology, like graphics, seen in Saw X would have been available when those films took place.
Post-production
Most of the gore was done with practical effects, with CGI only being used for touchups. The filmmakers considered to use some VFX to de-age Bell and Smith due to the fifteen years that have passed since they first appeared in the original Saw trilogy, but they ultimately desisted and Greutert was glad that they didn't de-age the actors, as "some of the films that have de-aged their actors, it puts some distance between the character and the audience", feeling that Bell and Smith have some emotional close-ups that should not be altered.
Release
Saw X was released theatrically in the United States by Lionsgate Films on September 29, 2023. The film was set to be released on October 27, 2023, before Lionsgate announced at the San Diego Comic-Con that it would be moved up to its current date.
Reception
Box office
As of October 5, 2023, Saw X has grossed $23.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $11.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $34.6 million.
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In the United States and Canada, Saw X was released alongside The Creator, PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie, and the wide expansion of Dumb Money, and was projected to gross $15–18 million from 3,262 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $8 million on its first day, including $2 million from Thursday night previews. It went onto debut to $18.3 million, finishing second behind PAW Patrol. It was below the average opening weekend of the franchise ($23 million), but higher than recent installments Spiral ($8.8 million in 2021) and Jigsaw ($16.6 million in 2017).
Saw X topped the box office in the United Kingdom and Ireland, grossing $2.31 million in the first three days.
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 121 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 22 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" as well as praised its character development and plot twists.
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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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 Mark Hoffman
Michael Beach as Henry Kessler
Isan Beomhyun Lee as a custodian
David Alfano as a doctor
Katie Barberi as cancer support group leader
Donagh Gordon as Finn Pederson
