-News & Events-

‘Saw X’ Director Kevin Greutert on Making the Franchise’s First Critically Acclaimed Film

If anyone deserved to be at the helm of the Saw franchise’s first critically acclaimed film, it’s Saw X director Kevin Greutert. The editor-turned-director has been credited on every single Saw film, be it as an editor, director or executive producer, beginning with James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s original Saw (2004). Greutert chalks Saw X’s success up to an accessible plot and the calculated risk of asking the audience to empathize more than ever with the franchise’s signature antagonist, John “Jigsaw” Kramer (Tobin Bell).

“We took a risk by really fleshing out John Kramer’s character. It’s contrary to the Jaws and Alien wisdom that the less you see of your monster, the better. If this movie had a chance, it was going to be by going deep into John Kramer,” Greutert tells The Hollywood Reporter.

Besides a certified-fresh badge on Rotten Tomatoes, Saw X opened with $18.3 million on a $13 million budget, so the film’s box office performance implies that there’s still plenty of appetite left for the horror franchise. As a direct sequel to Saw (2004) and a prequel to Saw II (2005), Saw X concludes with Kramer and his apprentice, Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), taking a young child named Carlos (Jorge Briseño) under their wing. This character offers another potential way forward for the franchise, as the Saw brain trust could always check in with a grown-up Carlos in the present day.

For now, Greutert is viewing Saw X as a goodbye to Jigsaw.

“We’ll just have to see what the future of Saw is,” Greutert says. “There are so many directions we could go, but for me, there’s no obvious one coming out of this film. I really wanted it to feel like a kind of final send-off for the Jigsaw character, but never say never.”

Below, during a recent spoiler conversation with THR, Greutert also discusses the franchise’s regret over killing off Bell’s Jigsaw all the way back in Saw III (2006).

Well, hell has frozen over as the Saw franchise finally has a critically acclaimed film.

(Laughs.)

Did test screenings give you some indication that this might be possible?

Well, we didn’t do any kind of traditional test screening. We really never do on the Saw films out of concern that spoilers are going to leak out. I can say that when I first started showing scenes to the producers and to Lionsgate, their reactions were really encouraging. And then, when the film was finally cut together and people started seeing it, I felt pretty good. I felt like it was really going to be great. And even in the preparation stage, when I was hiring crew members and showing candidates the script, some of them knew nothing about Saw, but you could feel their enthusiasm for it. So you could see at the script stage that it was going to be pretty cool.

Reference URL: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/saw-x-ending-future-1235615775/