It’s October, and you know what that means? Halloween and horror movie season! So, I’ve been waiting for this movie to be released since it was announced, and I have to say, I was not disappointed. The Saw franchise is one of my all-time favorites in the horror genre. Even the spin-offs, Jigsaw and Spiral, are really well done and creative. To be honest, I did not get into the film series until I watched Saw II in theaters when I was still in high school in 2005. Same year, I graduated. From there, I watched the first film and asked myself, “Why the hell did I not watch this sooner?” What really intrigued me was the psychological horror aspect of it, and I’m a sucker for a bloody horror-mystery. What I was impressed with was the engineering of all the traps and the fact that Jigsaw had never killed any of his victims himself. Despite the life-threatening and extreme dire circumstances of which you had to do to get through those games, Jigsaw still gives the subject a chance to survive. Whether you lost a few pints of blood or lost a limb, the subjects were still given a fighting chance. No matter how extreme.

Saw X was no different. The difference this time around was that the story takes place after the first film, and before the second. John Kramer already inherited the nickname Jigsaw, and Amanda had already become John’s loyal assistant. The film starts while John is in an MRI tube for treatment for his brain tumor. After the treatment, John sees a young orderly going through the belongings of a dying patient and pockets an expensive watch. While witnessing the theft, John has a vision of this young man in an eye trap device. All the subject has to do is voluntarily break each one of his fingers on each hand to prevent each one of his eyes from being sucked out of his head before the clock runs out. After the vision is over, John sees the young man put back the belongings that he intended to steal. As the young man walks out of the room, John whispers to the young man, “Good choice.” That right there set a chill down my spine.

A few days later, John runs into a man, Henry Kessler, a man that John knows from a cancer support group who had been suffering from colon cancer. Henry tells John about a cutting-edge treatment that has been doing wonders for thousands of people from a Norwegian doctor who had developed a cancer treating after-surgery cocktail, developed by Dr. Finn Pedersen. John reaches out and gets a response from Finn’s daughter, Cecilia. Cecilia refers John to her clinic off the grid in Mexico City to remain untraceable to big pharma, giving John the reassurance that the treatment is real and 90% affective. In a state of desperation, John chooses to roll that dice.

Arriving in Mexico City, John is driven to the clinic by taxi driver Diego, and meets Cecilia and her team – Mateo, Valentina, and Dr. Cortez – as well as a young woman named Gabriela who claims to have been cured by Cecilia, and another patient, Parker Sears, who just underwent surgery. John also meets Carlos, a young boy who lives nearby, and the two bond when John fixes his bike. John goes under for surgery, and he wakes up to Cecilia informing him that he is now cancer-free. Finding a new lease on life, John purchases a gift for Gabriela; however, upon returning to the clinic, he finds it abandoned and realizes that the whole operation was a scam by unwraping the bandages on his head and learns he did not go under any surgery. The surgery was staged. John instinctively goes full Jigsaw mode and is on the hunt to track down each one of these individuals who have frauded him and test each one of them in Jigsaws deadly games.

I will not spoil the rest of how the film goes but this is an installment that even if you dont keep up with the franchise, anyone can enjoy this despite its brutality in which how Jigsaw puts the people who have wronged him to the test to redeem themselves. This entry of the film series was an entirely different direction as before. You get to see a different and more human and empathetic side of John Kramer. Much to the usual twist and turns, you see a bonded relationship with Amanda Young. The bond John has with little boy Carlos and despite his death sentence of a condition, and the traps he lays for his victims to test them on what you would sacrifice to keep living, Jigsaw still has a shred of hope for humanity. The film also shown a brutal and terrifiing portrayal of how people in the medical profession can take such advantage of desperate and vulnerable people who are just looking for that small shred of hope. All for money. So I understand Jigsaws need for justice in the case. No one is dealt a perfect hand of cards in life, it’s all how we deal with it that matters. Some people appreciate life, some people shit all over it. Jigsaw was portrayed more of a empathetic vigilante type rather than a villian. Although I don’t agree with the methods that Jigsaw does to help people appreciate the life they have been given, but I fully understand that metaphor this film gives that sometimes you have to go through hell to see a little bit of heaven.

Over all I give this film 2 thumbs way up!

Thanks for reading!