Saw X Parent Guide

John Kramer’s (Tobin Bell) life was unremarkable until he found out that he had terminal brain cancer. His confrontation with his own mortality led him to believe that most people were taking their lives for granted, and in attempting to make them take their brief span on the planet a little more seriously, he developed a new hobby: Homicide.

Kramer designs and builds elaborate traps, which he calls “games”. These devices force his victims to make a choice between some form of horrifying self-mutilation or a painful death. While his hobby has kept him occupied, his brain tumor still demands attention and his doctor tells him that, at this rate, he has only months to live.

After learning about a potential treatment offered by an unlicensed and highly secretive private group in Mexico, Kramer signs up. The program’s director, Cecilia (Synnøve Macody Lund), assures him that the procedure has a 90% success rate, and his odds of being in remission this time next year are high. But when Kramer wakes up following his surgery to find that the entire clinic has vanished, and that they faked the operation, he starts planning. Even under these circumstances, Kramer is going to give them all the same chance he gives everyone else: Play the game…or die.

Look, I’ve never been a Saw fan, so take all of this with a heap of salt. I only watched the first two films (convenient, since this film takes place in between), and I wasn’t exactly enraptured. Series star Tobin Bell is certainly intriguing as Kramer, but the softer, more human approach to his character in this film struck me as a little odd. From what I recall, his little moralizations about the value of life weren’t taken particularly seriously in earlier films – he was just old, dying, and crazy and the “fight for your life” stuff was his little delusion. Humanizing the series’ villain isn’t necessarily a great call in a franchise famous for graphic gruesome torture and homicide.

Unfortunately, Kramer’s little personal journey is the most interesting part of the film. Once we get into the story’s chewy center, it’s just more of the same. I think another reason I’ve never resonated with the franchise is that I would not be willing to torture myself to potentially survive the experience – if you want to kill me, kill me. That’s your business. I’m not letting you off-shore all the dirty work onto me, though, no matter how big the bear trap in which you’ve locked my head.

Would you believe that this is a nice, sweet-hearted, family story? If you and your loved ones are currently serving time in a high security prison for violent offenders, that might be true. For the rest of us, this is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a Saw movie. People are graphically mutilated for most of the film, and that’s really the point of the series. There’s also a good bit of swearing and brief scenes of social drinking and prescription opioid abuse, but remarkably no sexual content. See? Family entertainment – for the Mansons.