Wendy Ide 

Saw X review – unstintingly inventive torture porn

Serial killer John Kramer finds a new lease of murderous life in the thoroughly unpleasant 10th outing of the horror franchise
  
  

Tobin Bell as John Kramer in Saw X, looking mean in blue light
Tobin Bell as John Kramer in Saw X. Lionsgate Photograph: Lionsgate

Amputation devices, eye-socket vacuum contraptions, auto-craniotomy and an entrail lasso: it’s business as usual, then, for the torture carousel that is the Saw franchise. A terminal cancer diagnosis has not mellowed the endlessly inventive serial murderer John Kramer (Tobin Bell, looking even more like a judgmental skull than usual) in a 10th outing, which is set in a time period between the first and second instalments.

Having run out of options with conventional medicine, John travels to Mexico for risky – and very expensive – experimental treatment. You can probably guess where this is going. He leaves, if not with a new lease of life, then at least with a renewed appetite for his “hobby”. Grisliness occurs, accompanied by a score that sounds like knives being sharpened on violins. It’s thoroughly unpleasant, but that’s rather the point.

Watch a trailer for Saw X.
 

Leave a Comment

Required fields are marked *

*

*