Saw X Review Roundup

The reviews are trickling in for Saw X, and it’s looking like another nauseating crowd-pleaser. The traps are diabolical (at one point there’s an eye vacuum), the gore severe, and Tobin Bell’s John Kramer is chilling in a more pronounced role.

The tenth film in the Saw franchise is set between the events of SAW I and II, and sees Kramer travel to Mexico to find a cure for his cancer, but when he discovers its an elaborate scam, he gets grisly retribution on its con artists.

That's certainly one way to use an engineering degree.

Saw X is currently sitting at a Rotten Tomatoes score of 84% from 57 reviews. Most reviews, plus tweets from reviewers who’ve seen preview screenings, are positive.

Saw X reviews

• The Independent: “Ten films in and it’s a routine we’re so intimately familiar with that it’d be hard to call any element of Saw X original but returning director Kevin Greutert knows what’ll satisfy his audience: a few buckets of blood and the gag-inducing sound of crunching bone. Here, they’ll get exactly what they want. And so will John.”

• Variety: “Tobin Bell, with his stare of pitiless wisdom, is also a draw, but “Saw X” raises the issue of how much of John Kramer’s hand-wringing is too much. In the eyes of a lot of “Saw” fans, hand-wringing < hands cut off with mechanized garden shears.”

• The Hollywood Reporter: “None of this would work nearly as well without Bell, whose raspy voice and menacing gravitas are so riveting that he makes Jigsaw’s oft-repeated declaration “I’d like to play a game” scary as hell. He’s made the character truly iconic, much like Robert Englund did with Freddy Krueger. Accept no substitutions.”

• Forbes (via Twitter) “SAWX is bound hands down one of the best in the franchise…Putting John Kramer centre stage more than ever works brilliantly and Tobin Bell slays. Amanda’s ‘return’ is executed brilliantly and the traps are amongst some of the best, even when quite simple, plus the story is [thumbs up emoji]."

• Digital Spy: “Saw X might still deliver the gore you'd expect from a Saw outing, yet in attempting to do something new and not just the same-old, it's potentially injected the series with fresh blood.”

Is Saw X more brutal than Eli Roth's latest? Decide for yourself as the Thanksgiving trailer teases holiday nastiness.