Saw X Review Torture Porn Horror Returns With More Blood, Less Value
It's a strange existential feeling for me , sitting through Saw again, returning not only to the franchise, but to the entire subgenre of torture films. When a screaming woman is forced to amputate her leg and drink a liter of blood from her fresh wound to avoid being decapitated by barbed wire, we begin to wonder how and why we were brought here.
Given the studio's obvious desire for financial greed (cheap horror remains Hollywood's most reliable genre), it's tempting to wonder why we would want to endure another two hours of heartbreak , especially when it's served up on such an old set. . The series' decision to kill off big bad Jigsaw in Saw III was a franchise obsession with major shock value, but it placed the producers in a trap they struggled to escape from. The sequels were brilliant, adding to an increasingly complex story that made each new Saw movie feel like a daytime soap opera. The 2021 Chris Rock-directed film Spiral attempts to adapt the story into a crime thriller with a different villain, but evades a timeline that even the most ardent Saw fan has difficulty explaining. A new low for an already overloaded line.
Two years later, Jigsaw himself, aka Tobin Bell's John Kramer, inevitably returns in Saw It begins a few months later as a good-bad drama about Kramer's recent cancer diagnosis. When he heard about the new treatment, he flew to Mexico City and found new hope in medicine. But once the trial was over, Cramer realized it was a brutal scam and vowed to teach the fraudsters a lesson.
It's a fun way to look back at the series, and while later series have remained vague and often only briefly explained why issues were being explored, there is a clearer plot here and, as dark as the stakes, a stronger drama. The relative lack of scares in the first half (the finger snaps, the jaw-dropping dream sequences) may put off some, but it's surprisingly more magnetic than the chaos that ensues when Bale takes on the more intimate role of the prudent man. . and studied theater. The set pieces are just as strange, even grotesque, as they began, and while we wonder how they will end, we are reminded of what Saw is all about; a test of juvenile endurance. Some of the best sequels, which never matched the twisted appeal of the original, found a way to slip in a game full of twists and turns. But when the trap is sprung here, there is very little flesh in all the blood.
It's set in the mid-2000s and was made on the same day as Kevin Grethert's horror music video. It's a relic that aims to evoke nostalgia for Saw (Halloween was actually in Saw's shadow for a few years): without the world at large. They know his terrible universe and can enter it. I hope to gain new fans. Although Saw Jigsaw is a rare horror villain for a film still struggling with its own brutal morality and disgusted by the decadence around him, he alternates between brainsaws, death by radiation, and Belle pondering the meaning of life and thinking about imminent death. : A strange, clumsy kick is capped off by a suitably clean finish.
It might be a little better than the series' lows, but there's no justification for why we're drawn to 2000s horror. We've seen enough.
