My thoughts
Saw X is a tough movie for me to compare to the rest of the series, because what makes a good film and what makes a Saw movie that I'll enjoy are pretty unrelated. Most of the (many!) changes Saw X makes compared to the rest of the franchise make it better in terms of quality, but I can't help feeling that it's lost some of the Saw in the process. For a franchise about chopping off your own limbs to survive, I guess it's no surprise that Twisted Pictures were willing to cut whatever it took out of the formula to keep the series staggering on, but I do wonder if this new, leaner presentation has the legs to keep the franchise standing. My hope is that Saw XI will reintroduce at least some of the camp, the ridiculous editing and the insane timeline. Is that a great way a good, profitable movie? Probably not. But there's a kind of heart to the convoluted, grainy, badly-edited Saw sequels that I love, and that I worry about losing. Saw X might have been forced to cut a limb or two off the formula, but I hope the franchise at least has the energy to drag itself through a few more, hopefully stupider, movies.
At the very least, I'd like a little more Hoffman :)
As a movie, this is probably the most well-made saw movie since the first one, and I think the average person will like this more than any other Saw sequel. Personally, though, I watch saw movies for the gay tension, the insane timeline and lore, the stupid character ships, and the horrific editing. From that perspective, my favorite Saw movies also happen to be the ones that are the worst films, so keep that in mind.
If you watch Saw for the gore you'll probably like this (although it takes almost an hour to get to the first real trap), if you've never seen a Saw movie before you'll probably like this -- hell, if you just saw the original and didn't like the sequels I think you'll like this (what are you doing on this website?). But it does a few things that seem questionable to me as someone who likes these movies for probably the wrong reasons. So, here are some things I (as someone with bad taste) liked and didn't like, in no particular order:
Things I liked
The structure of this movie, which is basically original in the series. This raises some real issues in the second and third act but before all that, there's a nearly hour-long introduction without any real trap scene, which I actually found pretty compelling. To be honest this introduction is one of the best-written sequences in the whole franchise, although it does start to drag a bit by the end. Tobin Bell is genuinely giving a great performance here and this is a great opportunity for him to carry a chunk of the movie. I know that this movie's more sympathetic take on John is pretty controversial but personally I actually liked it - I always enjoy seeing Jigsaw's perspective (especially the apprentice drama and Hoffman's cat-and-mouse game in IV - 3D) so I think this is a pretty natural fit.
The soundtrack! I normally don't notice the music in Saw movies other than the final "Hello Zepp" sequence in each one, but there are some really creative uses of music (eg. as a character swings a pipe at her foot during her game, they score each impact with a loud note that gets higher pitched with every swing) and in general the music during the traps is great!
Things I didn't like
The horror is completely undermined by these victims being maybe the least sympathetic jigsaw victims in the series other than the literal nazis. If I hate a character's guts (and jesus, this movie really wants you to hate some of the victims), why would I be rooting for them to escape? If they're cartoonishly evil (impossible to explain without spoiling, but believe me) then I'm not feeling any fear watching them in the trap because I can't imagine myself being in their shoes at all. I won't pretend like this is the first Saw movie to struggle with the balance between victims being likeable and flawed enough to warrant being placed in a trap (almost every movie has a random drug addict or mentally ill person thrown in there for no reason), but this is the first one to my memory that goes the other direction and makes the victims so unlikeable that it basically removes the horror aspect entirely.
The new sort of gauntlet this movie introduces, where every trap happens in the same room one at a time, with all the other victims watching. In theory this is fine but it introduces a few issues. Namely, the victims are so unlikeable that I don't really care to see their reactions to the other traps. There's a real horror in watching a trap play out and knowing that another character is going to have to go through something even worse next, which Saw II and the other gauntlet movies build pretty effectively, but that's completely absent here. This new kind of gauntlet also kind of crushes the pacing - I'll get more to this later, but nearly every scene in the main trap room that isn't a game actively playing out really starts to drag.
The structure. I mentioned the long intro, which I think could have been cut down but is generally fine. My bigger issue is that there's basically no B-plot for the movie to cut away to when a scene starts to drag (or, rather, the B- and C-plots revolve around the same characters in the A-plot, so rather than cutting away to some other character's own adventure, we just see the characters in one scene walk into a different room and start a new conversation). I strongly believe that Saw movies are best when they show both the killer's and the police perspective. Spiral showed only the police perspective, and was probably the weakest movie in the series for it - Saw X is certainly much better but it struggles to move the plot along without anything to cut away to.
