He Saw you. (CREDIT: Alexandro Bolaños Escamilla)

Starring: Tobin Bell, Shawnee Smith, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Joshua Okamoto, Octavio Hinojoso, Paulette Herández, Jorge Briseño, Michael Beach

Director: Kevin Greutert

Running Time: 118 Minutes

Rating: R

Release Date: September 29, 2023 (Theaters)

On the occasion of reflecting upon watching Saw X and what it all means, I have decided to ponder out loud why I haven’t seen every single release in this iconic franchise.

I didn’t become a full-fledged horror fan until approximately my sophomore year of high school. So the first Saw seemingly arrived at the perfect time for me to appreciate it when it came out in October of my junior year. But it kind of snuck up on me, as it was a relatively modest release that I don’t recall seeing a whole lot of promotion for. Plus, fall was always overloaded with school work and extracurriculars in those days.

But a year later, I had grown wise to Saw‘s value, and I happily popped in for Saw II despite still not having seen the original. I could have carried on the tradition with Saw‘s III through VI, but college in the fall proved to be even less conducive to moviegoing than high school in the fall. And as the series moved along and the torture become even more tortuous, it appeared to be drifting further and further away from my sensibilities.

By the time I was finishing up college and my cinema time increased in inverse proportion, a new horror franchise took over the annual primo Halloween spot. And thus I found myself a Paranormal Activity devotee, soaking up all the found footage, while Saw drifted away into oblivion, at least for a little while.

The first attempt at a reboot arrived in 2017, and I would’ve happily seen Jigsaw in theaters, at least out of morbid curiosity. But I just didn’t get around to it, as it disappeared from multiplexes pretty quickly. Fast-forward to 2021, as Chris Rock and the spinoff Spiral migrated the franchise outside the fall for the first time. And as I was feeling newly COVID-vaxxed, it was the perfect time for me to join in on the fun.

Then somehow after all that, Saw X arrived in September 2023 at a point when the culture was more receptive to reconsidering John Kramer’s fun and games than ever before. And so we got a thoughtful and surprisingly sweet torture-fest to meet our curiosity. This is one of those sequels that feels like it’s finally doing what the franchise should’ve been doing all along, i.e., centering Kramer’s cancer treatment right from the get-go. It made for a formula of dangerous sympathy generation, and now it holds a special place in my… I don’t want to say “heart,” but it certainly made a connection.

Saw X Grade: 5 Brain Surgeries out of 8 Amputations