Hollywood’s most popular horror franchises have recently lacked iconic villains. This isn’t to criticize successful series like The Conjuring, Insidious, and The Purge, which don’t rely on one main antagonist. However, the infamous adversaries of scary movies—Michael Myers, Leatherface, Freddy Krueger, Jason Voorhees—have aged without any clear successors. That’s why Saw X, one of this Halloween season’s biggest horror releases, revolves around an octogenarian.
I’m talking about John Kramer, also known as the Jigsaw Killer, portrayed by Tobin Bell. Kramer is an irritable civil engineer obsessed with trapping people in deadly escape rooms. Saw introduced Jigsaw in 2004 as a small indie film directed by James Wan. Surprisingly, it grossed $103 million worldwide on a $1.2 million budget. The franchise quickly churned out sequels every year until the poorly received Saw 3D in 2010. While subsequent reboots achieved moderate success at the box office, they failed to capture Kramer’s star power. However, Saw X rectifies that mistake by giving Jigsaw the spotlight, resulting in one of the franchise’s strongest installments since the original.
Initially, Jigsaw played a minor role in Saw, appearing briefly in flashbacks as a terminally ill cancer patient and the architect of gruesome traps. The film’s big twist revealed him as a criminal mastermind who traps people to make them appreciate life. Saw II introduced Amanda, a former victim whose jaw had been encased in a brutal device known as a “reverse bear trap.” She became Jigsaw’s disciple, convinced by his twisted philosophy.
The sequels should have followed a simple formula: Kramer and Amanda subjecting people to bizarre trials for spiritual purification. The first Saw had two people chained in a room with rusty hacksaws, forcing them to amputate their own legs for escape. The later films increased the complexity of the traps but adhered to the same concept—pushing morally deficient individuals to make extreme sacrifices to survive. However, both Kramer and Amanda died in Saw III, leaving subsequent films to rely on flashbacks, with Bell simply making glorified cameos.
Saw X takes the opposite approach, placing Bell front and center for an epic two-hour runtime (unusual for a gritty slasher film) and allowing him to showcase his acting talents. Jigsaw is no longer a shadowy figure behind the scenes, conveying information through tape recordings. The story is set between Saw and Saw II, which is a risk considering Bell’s 81 years of age. Nevertheless, the actor brings back the character with gusto, portraying both his anguish over battling a terminal disease and his unwavering desire to continue his sadistic games until his last breath. While recent Halloween films brought back the original Michael Myers performer, Nick Castle, to don the mask, Bell delivers a more Shakespearean performance, delivering eerie monologues one after another.
In Saw X, Kramer is enticed to Mexico, seeking an experimental cancer treatment. However, he falls victim to a scam. Surprisingly, the film devotes a fair amount of time to this plot-driven setup, spending 30 minutes on Kramer’s deception and robbery. Turning him into a sympathetic protagonist is an intriguing choice. Although Jigsaw follows a strange moral code, giving victims a chance to win the games he plays, he is ultimately responsible for numerous deaths.
However, in Saw X, his victims mostly deserve their fate because they were involved in the scam that crushed his hope. Amanda joins Kramer as they establish a hideout in a massive warehouse, imprisoning the con artists and getting to work. In previous Saw movies, Kramer remained unseen during this phase, with significant screen time devoted to new prisoners struggling to understand their situation. But in Saw X, Kramer is out in the open, serving as a meta-textual homage to Bell himself—a beloved character actor who landed the biggest role of his career in his early 60s.
Should the film succeed, I can envision Bell returning for more. However, it’s equally easy to see Saw X as a swan song, bidding farewell to a prominent member of schlock horror’s rogues’ gallery. Despite streaming’s rise and the challenges of the pandemic, the genre remains financially resilient. Nevertheless, legacy sequels like this cannot last forever. Bell may be sprightly for his age, but due to plot conventions alone, Kramer is trapped in the past—an artifact of the Bush era and a time that frequently debated the cultural value of “torture porn.” It’s twisted fun to see him back for one last ride, but Jigsaw’s games won’t entertain us indefinitely. So, let’s enjoy it while it lasts.
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