Saw X review: The Jigsaw Killer makes a gruesomely good return

Watching Saw X one might safely assume that Tobin Bell was lured back to the series with the promise that, for this installment, he would get to do everything he ever wanted in a Saw movie. A serious actor, Bell surely knows this bloody franchise will be what he’s best remembered for, and he treats the role of John Kramer, the Jigsaw Killer, like it’s Shakespeare. Though he’s typically heard more than he’s seen in these films, taking a backseat or relegated to flashbacks while others follow his prerecorded instructions, Saw X places him in almost every scene. By the time Billy the puppet shows up, it feels like a franchise obligation; Bell’s Kramer has finally upstaged his more merchandisable avatar.

Now in his eighties, while still improbably playing a 52-year-old man, Bell may not have many more of these in him. If this is his last, it makes for a fitting swan song, allowing him to play a wider range of moods and moments than the formula typically permits. In the manner of Renny Harlin deciding that, for A Nightmare On Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Freddy Krueger was actually the hero, director Kevin Greutert positions John in a similar role here. Typically, the viewer feels at least a touch of sympathy for the damaged souls forced to test their mettle in Jigsaw’s elaborate dismemberment contraptions. This time, not so much. They’re awful people who—at least in horror movie terms—deserve it.

Were this installment numbered like a Disney direct-to-video sequel, it would more accurately be called Saw 1-1/2, taking place between the first two films, before Kramer has fully resigned himself to the terminal nature of his cancer. Inspired by the seemingly miraculous recovery of a fellow patient (Michael Beach) in group therapy, he follows the guy’s advice and contacts off-the-grid doctor Cecilia Pederson (Norwegian former film critic and model Synnøve Macody Lund), who runs a clinic in an abandoned chemical factory in Mexico, which would probably raise red flags for all but the most desperate.

Greutert previously directed Saw VI in 2009, at the height of the Obamacare debates, and it remains one of the most popular installments, for throwing a corrupt health insurance executive into Jigsaw’s chamber of tortures. Here, Greutert draws from a similar well, aiming at the quack cure industry which takes advantage of anti-vaxxers and anyone else for whom the phrase “Big Pharma” is an automatic trigger. The cancer treatment turns out to be utterly bogus, of course, but the chemical factory is the ideal location for Jigsaw to rig up a few traps and mete out surgery-inspired punishments.