The Saw X Filmmakers Wanted More Practical Traps
There are some people out there who will tell you the reason they like the "Saw" movies is because of the complex moral and ethical dilemmas they submerge their conflicted characters into. And that John Kramer, the most conflicted of them all, is among the most compelling villains in modern horror history — if he's a true villain at all.
Well, I think everyone else is going to see heads smashed by blocks of ice and eyeballs sucked out of their sockets.
However you feel about the "Saw" movies, you can't deny that the decisive factor in their appeal is the blood, guts, and carnage. Tobin Bell's Kramer, known to his victims as Jigsaw, and his apprentices Amanda (Shawnee Smith) and Hoffman (Costas Mandylor) have devised all manner of dastardly traps over the years to unjustly punish mildly flawed people teach bad people big lessons. As the series has gone on, however, the traps have gotten increasingly elaborate, their victims less deserving, and the means of rendering these traps less practical.
But with the latest entry in the franchise, the runtime-busting "Saw X," director Kevin Greutert wanted to get back to basics. Remember that the wildly successful first "Saw" movie seized the zeitgeist with two simple traps: a reverse bear trap wired onto a face, and two guys chained together in a room with only a hand saw to set them free. The goal for "Saw X" was to get back to the ingenuity and simplicity of that conceit, and in a new commentary on the Blu-ray release, we have more info on the what, how, and why.
[Billy the Puppet voice] Do you want to go to Home Depot?
"Saw X" features some pretty memorable traps. The story takes place between the first and second films, and sees Kramer seek treatment for his cancer at an experimental clinic. When he discovers that the fix was a fraud, he rounds up the crooked faux doctors and nurses and subjects them to his usual tricks. There's pipe bombs implanted in someone's forearms, a trap that requires someone to cut off their leg and suck out the thigh bone marrow, a radiation therapy-themed trap, and more.
In the Blu-ray commentary, producer Mark Burg described the reorientation around constructing these traps this time around:
"I think the traps started getting over the top, and one of the things we really looked at was bringing the traps down in scale and size to where you can basically ... ya know, everything you need to make these traps is basically at Home Depot."
Greutert added that they wanted to ensure that the traps were not only built practically but read as practical on screen. The fruit of their efforts is evident in the finished film. The eyeball-vacuuming device in particular is very clearly some dingy semi-translucent PVC pipes joined to a mandible-looking metal contraption. Simple! And so scary!
If you want to see the rest of these gruesome gizmos for yourself, "Saw X" is now available on DVD, Blu-ray, and most rental platforms.