The Saw franchise will never die. These movies are just too cheap to make and too strangely compelling to let go. The two attempts to reboot the series after Saw: The Final Chapter didn’t quite manage to tap into what made the franchise interesting, sadly, but Saw X has the potential to bring everything back together. But there are many big ifs involved.
When does Saw X release?
Saw X is currently scheduled for release on October 27, 2023, just in time for Halloween this year.
Is there a trailer?
Not yet, but they’ve completed filming and so a trailer could drop tomorrow. But it’s more likely that we won’t get our first real look at Saw X until much closer to its release date.
Who’s directing and writing Saw X?
Spiral: From the Book of Saw brought back Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Saw II, III, and IV, in its attempt to take the series back to its roots with Chris Rock and Samuel L Jackson without really worrying about the past plot. But Spiral apparently didn’t perform well enough to get a Spiral 2 going, and instead we’re getting something else that will apparently try a new path for keeping this franchise going.
To that end, Saw X is bringing back another series veteran to direct. This time it’s Kevin Greutert, who directed Saw VI (a fan favorite) and The Final Chapter and has edited every Saw movie except Spiral.
Nobody’s been more involved with the Saw franchise than he has, and by now he knows what makes these movies tick better than anybody else–as the editor on eight of the nine movies he’d have to. There are no guarantees of quality in this life, but if you want a director who takes the whole of the Saw franchise seriously, you got one.
Saw X was written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, who wrote both Jigsaw and Spiral.
Are any past cast members returning?
We have two that we know of: Tobin Bell, who played John Kramer/Jigsaw, and Shawnee Smith, who played his victim-turned-apprentice Amanda. These characters are both very dead and have been that way since Saw III. There is no reason to expect them to secretly still be alive or that Saw X is a prequel. Jigsaw in particular got a full, on-screen autopsy in Saw IV in which we saw his brain removed from his skull. He’s as dead as he can be. But as they’ve done so many times before with these characters, they’ll appear in flashbacks
Is Chris Rock coming back?
Not as far as we know. Spiral was a passion project for Rock–he even wrote the story treatment himself–and so he might not love this apparent pivot away from whatever new threads Spiral had been setting up. But nothing’s ever off the table with Saw, and we rarely know much about each movie before they come out. A cameo would hardly be shocking.
What’s the plot of Saw X?
Not a single official detail about the story of Saw X has been publicly announced, but the combination of everything discussed above with the return to the original franchise naming convention (at least for now) suggests one thing: that Saw X will feature a present narrative with plenty of flashbacks that completely change what we thought we knew about one or more past Saw movies.
That is the real Saw formula: telling these incredibly complicated stories full of twists that are constantly recontextualizing themselves. It’s that quality, that commitment to the plot not just of each movie but also to the franchise as a whole, that made the original series of Saw movies so much more than just a bunch of torture porn flicks.
So while Jigsaw and Spiral tried to tell stories that stood alone and separate from the past, Saw X likely won’t. If anything, there’s a good chance it will attempt to integrate those two reboots into the original series plot. Otherwise, why call it Saw X instead of Saw VIII?
Who else could we potentially see return?
There are several living main characters from past movies, and at least four living Jigsaw disciples: Detective Hoffman and Dr. Gordon from the original movies, along with the baddies from Jigsaw and Spiral. Any of them would be prime candidates for an appearance–every OG Saw fan is dying to catch up with Hoffman and Gordon after all this time.
Who else is in the cast of Saw X?
Aside from Bell and Smith, the confirmed cast of Saw X includes Adam Beach, Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Paulette Hernandez, Joshua Okamoto, and Octavio Hinojosa. Adam Beach, who frequently plays the sorts of characters who would squeeze your hand way too hard during a handshake, would make a great Jigsaw disciple–but he’d also make a terrific red herring.
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