Saw X: A Bad Plot Makes for Worse Vigilante Justice
Note: This is basically one giant spoiler. I saved some mystery for you, but not much. Read at your own risk.
John Kramer, a.k.a. Jigsaw, the guy who sets all the traps in the Saw franchise—he’s about to die of cancer at the start of Saw X (pronounced “Saw Ten”).
One day, John is out for brunch alone when he sees this dude from his cancer support group named Henry. Henry is doing good.
John says, “Whoa, how are you doing so good, Henry? Last time I checked, you was about to die” (paraphrased).
Henry says, “Dude, I was about to die, but I did this crazy experimental surgery. They took out my cancer, and they gave me this medicine, and look how good I am” (actually, just assume “paraphrased” unless stated otherwise).
He lifts up his shirt to show off a gnarly scar.
Remember this scar. This should be important for later but, for some reason, is not.
John finds out this experimental procedure is super secret. Big pharma is after the doctors because their treatment is so successful that, if this cure got out, then the rich wouldn’t be as rich anymore. John must travel to Mexico to have the procedure done.
Before John gets his brain surgery, John meets young Carlos, the son of the groundskeeper, who often plays soccer by himself. John sees that Carlos is trying to fix his bike but isn’t having much luck. John was once a civil engineer and architect, which explains why he’s so good at building death traps, and he goes up to try to help Carlos fix his bike.
In English, John says, “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Carlos says, “Qué?”
John says, “Yeah, that’s about the extent of my Spanish…How do you say ‘pull’?”
John demonstrates pulling on the wheel of the bike, and Carlos, after understanding, responds, “Jala.”
John fixes Carlos’ bike, and it’s a whole moment.
Remember this exchange. It is 50% important for later.
John goes into brain surgery to have his brain tumor removed. John, during his twilight anesthesia, sees a video of his brain surgery, and the surgeon is like, “Whoops, sorry,” and moves the screen out of view.
After John wakes up after surgery, he thinks, “I’ve got to thank these people. I need to go buy this special drink for the lady who let me stay with her as I was undergoing this procedure.” He buys the drink and comes back to her house to discover—it’s completely abandoned. Nobody’s there. And very incriminatingly, in the nearby clinic, the fake doctors left behind this DVD of brain surgery. The video he saw was fake, so rightfully, he wonders, “Was my brain surgery real?”
He takes off his head bandage to find that they didn’t even shave his head (even though an earlier scene showed them shaving his head). He’s got no scar, nothing.
When I saw this, I thought, “Oh, OK, I guess Henry is in on it then?” But, no, they never addressed that. They even have another dude come in later in the movie, and he also has no scar. “They ripped me off too!” he shouts.
Why didn’t the fake doctors cut into John and then just not take his brain tumor? Then he would at least have a scar to match Henry, and John could think that they took his tumor out. Way to show your work, criminals.
Anyway, the show must go on: John wastes no time kidnapping the participants of the con, with the help of his loyal henchwoman, Amanda.
When everyone is in the murder warehouse, John reveals through overhead speaker: “We went through your bank statements, fake doctors, and we know that you have performed this heist 34 other times, and guess what? All 34 people are dead.” (But Henry? Is he among them? Surely, this would have meant something to John and would have been worth mentioning at least one more time for continuity’s sake? But, as stated earlier, no, this is not the case.)
John. Absolutely. Mercilessly. Jacks. UP. This crew.
Even though the white Surgeon Lady is obviously the mastermind behind all of this.
She hired people in poverty, who clearly need the money—and haven’t most of us done something we’re not proud of for the sake of making rent? One crew member is hooked on Oxycontin. Another one, the first person to die actually, is a prostituted person.
He tells the first woman to die, “Hey, I need you to cut off your own leg. But that won’t fully atone for what you have done. Slice off your leg, from the middle of your thigh—part one. Part two, suck out enough bone marrow for my viewing pleasure, and then you can live.”
The woman gets halfway there. She gets about half the bone marrow she needs to satisfy Weird John. If I’m Jigsaw, I’m grading this challenge on a curve. She deserves to live. Good job, girl. A for effort.
Nope. John kills her. Excuse me, the machine kills her. John maintains, “I don’t kill anybody. They just don’t have enough will to live.”
The lady gets positively GOT.
The next guy, Fake Brain Surgeon—John makes him cut off his own scalp and pull out bits of his own brain. But again! That’s not all! He has to place his own brain bits on a scale and reach a certain weight to prove he has the will to live. Seems prettyyyyy counterintuitive, my guy.
Fake Brain Surgeon pulls out an impressive chunk of his own brain, but sorry! It’s not enough!
I won’t go through all the deaths here. I want you to have something to look forward to if you decide to watch this movie.
My point is: John Kramer is not for the people. He is not the vigilante he thinks he is. He is not the vigilante the fanbase maybe thinks he is. He tortured those people, even though karma got there first. Indeed, karma was the culprit in this case. They just needed the money.
The leader of the fake surgery heist is saved for last (so she can watch her crew die, as if she cares about them).
But in the third act, Surgeon Lady has escaped her restraints. She’s Very Mad at John for trapping her, and she says, in true cartoon villain fashion, “I want you to watch an innocent person die.”
Who happens to be playing outside the warehouse in the dark for some reason? Carlos, kicking around his lonely soccer ball.
Surgeon Lady walks outside and speaks to Carlos in English only, not a lick of Spanish (appalling for someone who worked in Mexico with crew members who were native Spanish speakers. Some of them, their English is good, but others, no, not so great. [I’m passing this judgment as a Texan, for what it’s worth.]).
“Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” she says. “You want to come inside?”
Carlos says, “OK.”
Oh?
“OK”?
I suppose he could have guessed what she meant by watching her body language, but in that moment, he seemed to understand her perfectly fine. They could have had him say, “Qué?” again and resist her—because she is a woman grabbing him by the arm in the night—but no. He goes along with her.
She brings him inside and, again, with little resistance, straps him to one end of this seesaw that John built. John is at the other end. The person at the bottom of the seesaw starts off getting waterboarded with blood (crazy—very creative), but if they push the lever, then the other person gets blood-boarded instead.
John says, “No jala, Carlos. No jala!” Don’t pull.
John pulls the lever so that he is getting fully blood-Flash Danced, saving Carlos from a horrible fate.
The final slap in the face from this plot is this: John saying, “No jala” is a way of outsmarting the white Surgeon Lady, who, despite working in literal Mexico, speaks exactly zero Spanish. How embarrassing for her.
John outsmarts Surgeon Lady and traps her.
She dies.
John is once again portrayed as a Good Dude because he gives Carlos all the money that he was supposed to have given to Surgeon Lady for his fake brain surgery.
The end.
(Please, franchise, let that be the end.)