Saw X Reviewed by GREG KING
Director: Kevin Greutert
Stars: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnove Macody Lund, Michael Beach, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Costas Mandylor.
The tenth installment in the gory torture porn franchise created by Melbourne filmmakers James Wan and Leigh Whannell in 2004, Saw X offers up little that is particularly new or even entertaining. And it is initially hard to work out where this film fits into the Saw timeline, although apparently it is supposed to fall between Saw and Saw II.
Diabolical sociopath John Kramer (series regular Tobin Bell, in his ninth appearance as the character) has been diagnosed with cancer and told he only has a few months to live. Desperately searching for help he attends a cancer support group, where he meets a cancer survivor named Henry Kessler (Michael Beach). Kessler claims to have been cured by an experimental Norwegian cancer treatment conducted by a group led by Dr. Pederson. A desperate Kramer contacts Pederson’s daughter Cecilia (Synnove Macody Lund, from the Netflix series Ragnarok, etc), who refers him to her clinic in Mexico City, and he heads off to Mexico for the illegal medical procedure which costs $250,000. But he learns to his disappointment that the whole operation is basically a scam aimed at defrauding people at their most vulnerable. Kramer tracks down Cecilia and her team of crooked medics and exacts a grim and gory vengeance on them through a series of ingenious, elaborate and sadistic but lethal traps.
The film has been written by horror specialists Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stoltern (Jigsaw, Spiral, etc) and they serve up plenty of gory delights that will certainly appease longtime fans of the series but is likely to turn the stomachs of audiences with a more sensitive and delicate sensibility. Nick Matthews’ cinematography uses a mostly dark and muted colour palette that adds to the sense of unease. The production design from Anthony Stabley certainly references the look of the earlier films in the series.
Saw X has been directed by Kevin Greutert, a veteran of the series, and he knows this dark visceral world that Kramer inhabits, and his handling of the material shows a familiarity with this grim world. This is also one of the few films in the series to feature Kramer as a central character and the main protagonist and it attempts to elicit a sense of empathy for the character.
Bell brings both a soft spoken, taciturn and urbane quality to his performance, but he also imbues the character with an air of menace. Shawnee Smith, another regular of the series, reprises her role as Kramer’s loyal associate and apprentice Amanda Young.
Visually and thematically though this is a pretty ugly film with lots of graphic violence and dismembered body parts. Much of the gore was achieved through practical effects and prosthetics augmented with some CGI. Nonetheless I felt like I needed a shower afterwards.
★★
