Saw X - The scoop and digest

Having previously directed Saw VI and Saw 3D, series editor Kevin Greutert is back in the chair to bridge the gap between Saw and Saw II.

For the record, Saw: The Video Game is set shortly after original and assuming the Freedom ending is chosen, Saw II: Flesh and Blood immediately follows; with David Tapp's son Michael as the new protagonist.

Tobin Bell - John Kramer/Jigsaw

Shawnee Smith - Amanda Young

Synnøve Macody Lund - Cecilia Pederson

Steven Brand - Parker Sears

Summary

Henry Kessler tells John Kramer about the Pederson Project, whose ground-breaking medical procedure cured his pancreatic cancer.

John contacts Dr. Cecilia Pederson who refers him to a clinic in Mexico.

He's told surgery was successful, but soon discovers operation is a scam to defraud the vulnerable and desperate.

After John reconnects with Amanda, the tables are turned on the dregs of humanity.

Mid-credits

Kessler is chained up in a dingy bathroom with John informing Hoffman he wants to play a game.

Reawakening

By stripping the series back to its roots, we get the strongest entry since original.

As well as satisfying the rapacious appetites of gore aficionados, there's also a surprising amount of heart, with Tobin Bell giving a franchise best performance.

Okay, let's talk traps.

The first is what poster advertises, but although the eyeballs of light fingered hospital custodian are sucked up through tubes, it's just fantasy.

Others involve a Gigli saw, DIY brain surgery, a radiation machine and a seesaw type mechanism, which waterboards John and Carlos with blood.

Cecelia is left imprisoned inside facility, leaving fate ambiguous.

Goddammit man, I REALLY wanted to see horrible bitch die in the most unpleasant way possible.

Fair play to Lund for making me hate character so much though.

Story is pretty coherent, but Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger's screenplay contains a major plot hole.

Dialogue reveals outfit has been fucking people over for eight years, so you'd think the scammed would notice something amiss after 'surgery'.

(Frowns).