SAW X

CONTAINS SPOILERS AND OUCH, THAT'S GOT TO HURT

Of all the major Hollywood horror series, the Saw saga has always been my favourite. Right from the start we had a central monster educating ne'er-do-wells of the value of human life and humanity rather than another indestructible bogeyman hacking up horny teenagers: if there wasn't a huge amount of profundity there, at least there was a convincing illusion that they were trying to do something a little bit more interesting. Forget Michael and Jason and Freddy. I loved the ingeniously devised torture machines, and I loved that they never shied away from the bloodshed: no quick cutaways, you saw the knife going in and the bones snapping out. (Even after multiple viewings over the years, I still wince at the ankle-smashing in Saw IV.) I loved the audacious back-and-forth timeline and constantly flipping narrative structure that actually felt like it was the plan all along rather than a nonsensical retconning to squeeze another movie out, and allowed Tobin Bell's John Kramer/Jigsaw to still feature in most of the sequels, even when they killed him at the end of Saw III and autopsied him at the start of Saw IV. Even making the seventh one in 3D didn't hurt it.

I loved the frantic editing, particularly in every movie's final sequence that showed you everything with the added twists, with Bell's menacing voiceover explaining everything and Charlie Clouser's iconic industrial theme music - as much of a series signature as John Carpenter's 5/4 Halloween theme or Harry Manfredini's shrieky violins for the Friday The 13th series. More importantly, I loved that none of it was sexual. I didn't count while I was rewatching all the previous instalments, but I'm pretty sure that most of Jigsaw's victims (or pupils) were male, and when the women were targeted, it wasn't because they were women. 

Saw X fits in somewhere between Saw and Saw II, when Kramer signs up for a revolutionary new treatment (the one he was explaining at the start of Saw VI) for his cancer, and discovers too late that they've actually done nothing: he's been conned. With surprising speed, he brings in Amanda (Shawnee Smith) and they've soon converted the now-abandoned Mexico lair into a torture factory where retribution, like a poised hawk, comes swooping down upon the wrongdoers and the four grifters inevitably have to hurt, slash and mutilate themselves in order to stay alive. But there are, equally inevitably, plot twists fast approaching...

This is a jigsaw with fewer pieces than usual. Though he still abides by his philosophies of rebirth and redemption through (extreme) suffering, Kramer is more of a vigilante out for justice this time out. It doesn't have the dizzying flips in the timeline (previous movies sometimes leapt to flashback within the same shot) and it doesn't have any big reveals about the characters (except for one which I figured quite early). The first act, showing Kramer's apparent treatment, is almost idyllic but feels way too long, though it's probably necessary, and there's almost a sense that the first trap is only really there because otherwise no blood gets splattered for what feels like the first half of the film. Having said that: when it does finally go for the jugular and teaches these heartless scumbags the lessons they so urgently need and deserve, it genuinely doesn't stint on the crowd-pleasing grue and the screaming and it more than earns its 18 certificate: it almost doesn't know (or care) when and where to stop. (Can you imagine what these films would have looked like back in the James Ferman days?)

Maybe it's my fault for not really wanting them to try and do something more: going for depth and character, going for emotion and seriousness, is fine but I missed the wild, giddy when-are-we timejumps and the oh-it's-that-guy callbacks and the hilariously convoluted structure, I missed so many of the familiar characters. I love that they've retained many of the essential ingredients including the music and editing, and aimed for a consistency of tone, style and technique.

But it still feels like an unnecessary postscript to a series which had already reached its natural endpoint: the first seven movies, whether by accident or design, work as one single entity that never went for comedy (there are no jokes in any of them) and never wimped out. I adore those first seven films but they really should have gone out on a high and stopped there. All horror franchises seem to go on for at least two films more than necessary and sadly Saw has fallen into that same trap. Jigsaw had moments, as did Spiral: From The Book Of Saw (even though it was more a cop procedural with weird standup comedy asides than a Saw film) but they really didn't need to be there. And, sadly, neither does this one. Don't misunderstand: there are absolute bucketloads of disgustingly yukky fun to be had, there's certainly the sense that these people certainly deserve what they get, and there's a satisfying mid-credits coda, but in the end Saw X only feels like half of a Saw film and only scores a V out of X from me.

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