Saw X has a lot in common with Fast X. Both films have come out in 2023. Both are the 10th part of their respective movie franchises. In both cases they stand as proof that you can only perform the same tricks so many times before seeming stale, and that these sorts of long-running movie series always end in failure. Saw X, which represents Lionsgate’s third successive attempt to revive Saw‘s popular fortunes, strikes me as that exact moment of failure. Jigsaw (2017) tried to push the concept to a fresh generation. Spiral (2021) tried to refresh things with a new aesthetic and an African-American focus. Saw X is an obvious act of giving up. It retreads old territory in a cynical manner, put together in such a perfunctory fashion that it forgets what made the earlier sequels succeed. It is an exhausted final squeeze of blood from a stone.

You can easily separate James Wan’s original Saw (2004) from the franchise that followed. It was a low budget violent thriller, focused on two characters locked in a bloody, life-or-death puzzle. Its antagonist, the “Jigsaw Killer”, was as good as invisible. It was Saw II (2005) that gave its villain a proper name, John Kramer, as well as a back story. Subsequent films upped the blood and gore via increasingly complicated death traps, and increasingly unravelled a soap opera-like narrative of twists, double-crosses, and successive copycats and apprentices. The series was bundled into the ‘torture porn’ genre that typified 21st century American horror movies, although what it really represented was old-fashioned grand guignol.

Saw X purports to give its audience what they want. Ever since Kramer (Tobin Bell) died at the climax of 2006’s Saw III, the franchise has consistently struggled to keep the character present through flashbacks and secretly recorded videotapes. For Saw X the film is placed back in the past: the entire feature takes place some time between Saw and Saw II. Kramer is dying from an inoperable brain tumour, takes a chance on an experimental treatment, and finds himself cruelly betrayed by con artists. In response, he kidnaps the criminals who deceived him and makes them justify their existence in a fresh series of traps.

The premise is critically flawed from the outset. For one thing there is little to no suspense. Audiences know that nothing significant can happen to Kramer in Saw X that might contradict events from Saw II and III. The group of petty criminals being tried are by-and-large irredeemable, meaning there is little impetus for viewers to hope for their survival. Previous films had focused on fatally flawed tragic heroes: this time around there is an attempt to frame Kramer himself as the hero. It simply fails to work, and turns a bleak, vicarious series of thrillers into something genuinely quite repugnant.

Director Kevin Greutert, who edited the original run and directed its sixth and seventh instalments, successfully replicates the grimy, urine-soaked colours and aesthetic of earlier films, but the screenplay (by Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg) confuses audience affection for Tobin Bell’s performance with affection for his character. The result is catastrophic. What is worse, it is boring. Bell is a great actor, and showcases some strong work here. The effort is wasted.

At least Jigsaw and Spiral, while not enthusiastically received by the Saw fanbase, tried a little to find new directions. Saw X is lazily made with cynical intentions.