Saw X Shocker: First Reviews Are Positive

Critics aren't playing games with Saw X. The first reviews are in for the 10th installment in the twisted torture saga — and they're shockingly positive. In 2004, James Wan and Leigh Whannell's original indie horror hit Saw spawned a franchise despite critics calling the gore-fest everything from a "glorified snuff film" to the since-coined phrase "torture porn." In the almost 20 years since, Lionsgate trotted out John "Jigsaw" Kramer (Tobin Bell), Billy the Puppet, torture traps, pig masks, and progressively gorier and deadlier games until 2010's Saw: The Final Chapter — which, ultimately, was not the final chapter — scored a franchise-worst 9% on Rotten Tomatoes.

After Lionsgate lifted the Saw X review embargo on Thursday, the new movie debuted on Rotten Tomatoes to a "fresh" 83% from two dozen reviews counted so far. While the score will fluctuate as more reviews come in, Saw X is better critically reviewed than even the original (50% "rotten") and is the first Saw installment to receive a "fresh" grade on the review aggregator website.

Saw X marks Bell's return to the franchise, a part sequel and part prequel set between the events of 2004's Saw and 2005's Saw II. (The fan-favorite Bell last appeared in 2017's Jigsaw and sat out 2021's Spiral, a standalone spin-off starring Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson.) The 10th movie also serves as a comeback for director Kevin Greutert, the franchise's longtime editor-turned-director who helmed 2009's Saw VI and 2010's critically-slaughtered Final Chapter (a.k.a. Saw 3D). 

Saw Rotten Tomatoes Scores

1. Saw X (2023) – 83%
2. Saw (2004) – 50%
3. Saw VI (2009) – 39%
4. Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) – 37%
5. Saw II (2005) – 37%
6. Jigsaw (2017) – 32%
7. Saw III (2006) – 30%
8. Saw IV (2007) – 18%
9. Saw V (2008) – 13%
10. Saw: The Final Chapter (2010) – 9%

Saw X Reviews

The Hollywood Reporter: "It takes a little longer than usual, but Saw X eventually gets around to its true raison d'etre, which is depicting in gory detail the ways in which Jigsaw's victims either succeed or fail at extricating themselves from the gruesome, Rube Goldberg-style death traps he's devised for them.... these films are undeniably fiendishly clever in the way they make Kramer somehow sympathetic even while he's doing monstrous things to people. 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." 

Variety: "John Kramer, who is now suffering from terminal brain cancer, is so front and center that Tobin Bell has never given such a full-scale performance as the human behind Jigsaw. Bell is 81 now, and in Saw X he's like Clint Eastwood crossed with Father Merrin from The Exorcist. Kramer is like a grizzled sheriff who has come to exorcise your demons. He's making you suffer, but only to free your soul...  The downside of Saw X seeming more like a real movie than many of the films in the series is that there's more talking and less torturing; I personally approve of that ratio, though I'm not sure it will pay off at the box office. The torture set pieces in the "Saw" films are lavish gifts of baroque horror presented to the audience. They are, quite simply, the reason we came. 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."

Total Film: "The fiendish contraptions Kramer and another returning party prepare for them demand a series of set-piece self-surgeries, staged with ghoulish aplomb. The bits in between, though, are talky and dreary, characteristics shared by a lackluster performance from Bell that suggests his killer was better off lurking in the shadows.  An early sequence involving snapped digits and sucked-out eyeballs is an outrageous cheat, while giving John a local lad to care about is a preposterously mawkish embellishment. Two decades on from the short that started everything, X must surely mark the spot Jigsaw finally rests in pieces."

IndieWire: "Bell, finally given the meaty part he's deserved since he spent a feature-length film in that pool of blood, dominates back at the warehouse. The gore has never looked more realistic. Saw X takes a back-to-basics approach with its utterly nauseating contraptions, drawing out the traps' various premises before launching the thieves into mercilessly short testing times. Billy the Puppet makes the trip to Mexico, but with not a single VHS tape in sight, the theatricality is largely left up to Bell. He's precise and stern without ever pushing too hard: the human embodiment of ye old 'I'm not mad, just disappointed' reprimand. When he does yell, you'll flinch; and when he doesn't, you'll be begging to release the tension."

Metro: "Although a little long and – believe it or not – fluffy at points, Saw X finesses the existence of an introspective man behind all the blood and guts, no thanks to Bell's killer performance and a relatively nuanced origin story of sorts."

Saw X opens in theaters Thursday.