Tag Archives: Saw X

Travel to Mexico, EVIL Said. Cure my Cancer, EVIL Said. Let the Game Begin, I Said. “Saw X” reviewed! (Lionsgate / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

Become A Part of the Game in “Saw X” on 4k/Bluray/DVD

Having a finished a trial by fire game of rebirthing the morally bankrupt that has coined him notoriety as the Jigsaw Killer, a terminal ill John Kramer ceaselessly searches a cure in order to continue his work.  Meeting a fellow cancer therapy group member outside of session provides hope when John learns a radical new and unauthorized surgery and serum cocktail that is seemingly a miracle cure for cancer.  His desperation led inquiry lands him in Mexico where he meets a team of specialists prepping his next day surgery and just when post-surgery John Kramer believes he’s beaten cancer, Kramer realizes he’s been a victim of fraud that’s exploits the most vulnerable and desperate ill-fated people.  Now, a new game begins to test the con artists on how far they will go to live. 

Six years has passed since the last “Saw” sequel was released with the Chris Rock helmed tangent spinoff “Spiral” and 13 years has passed since the last time John Kramer was a part of the game in “Saw 3D.”  2023 marked the return of to the basics with no divergent story from the Book of Saw or fleeting three-dimensional gimmicks to feign tangible blood and body parts in the tenth feature length film of the franchise known as “Saw X.”  The original story-lined sequel also reengages director of “Saw VI” and “Saw 3D” Kevin Greutert to pick up where he left off with a prequel that explores more of Kramer’s more vulnerable side as well as explore the time in between “Saw” and “Saw II” and it’s now unveiled characters who were then shrouded from view, working side-by-side with John Kramer, many years ago.  The writing duo of Peter Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg return from to the franchise after “Jigsaw” and “Spiral” to pen the script for the Twisted Pictures and Liongsgate Production with franchise decision making team of Mark Burg and Oren Koules producing.

So what has Tobin Bell, the face and persona creator behind John Kramer, been up to since 2017’s “Jigsaw?”  Well, let’s just say the now 81-year-old actor has starred in a string of under-the-radar, non-theatrical films that can’t seem to break him out of his bread-and-buttered pigeonhole as a man testing people’s will to overcome by severe measure.  The past year’s dysfunctional family rollercoaster “Sleep No More,” Darren Lynn Bousman’s creepy Saudi Arabian horror “The Cello,” and even a stint of various roles through “The Flash” television series over the years in between have barely moved the needle amongst audiences despite the projects critical and public acclaim.  While it’s a shame Bell receives little recognition for other projects, seeing him return to the role that made him a household name amongst horror fans is a sign of relief knowing Tobin Bell can still draw in a crowd, stepping almost seemingly effortless into John Kramer’s shoes of controversial convictions and never losing a step to bring a cunning and complex antihero back to the big screen with more blood on this hands, literally.  Kramer is not the only familiar to return as Amanda Young comes into the fray prior to her coming out in – ***Spoiler Alert***- “Saw II.”  Shawnee Smith reprises the role donning an unflattering pixie cut that’s even shorter than her “Saw II” hairdo, which keeps true to the timeline, but what plagues both Bell and Smith for a prequel is father time that rears his ugly head on both actors who are not getting any younger to play supposedly younger versions of their characters from which they last portrayed them.  This applies especially to Shawnee Smith who resembles very little of herself from her last appearance in a “Saw” film.  Yet, this doesn’t stop both Bell and Smith to re-embrace their roles and add more layers to their already nuanced identities as John and Amanda ensnares new game players South of the border in Gabriela (Renata Vaca), Valentina (Paulette Hernandez, “My Demons Never Swore Solitude”), Mateo (Octavio Hinojosa, “Come Play With Me”), and Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund, “Haunted”). ”Saw X” co-stars Steven Brand (“Mayhem”), Michael Beach (“Deep Blue Sea 2”), Costas Mandylor, Joshua Okamoto, and Jorge Briseño.

What most will come to realize about “Saw X’s” series placement in time is the foreshadowed knowledge of when and where John Kramer and Amanda Young meet their demise. What can the writers and producers add to a prequel that will enthrall and cause apprehension knowing that the two biggest players in “Saw’s” franchise ultimately live at the end of this intermittent story that mainly surrounds Kramer’s desperation for a cancer cure? To enthrall is simple by adding new bad apples into new escapable blood-drawing, death-dealing traps inside a humanizing John Kramer footnote outside the core city games that intertwine, interweave, and intersect from the very first Saw to the very last Saw in 3D. To surface apprehension for our foretold survivors would take some creative effort. In comes Jorge Briseño playing an adolescent Mexican boy innocent in all of this die-cathlon caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. While the boy, Carlos, adds an X-factor to the dilemma, the fate unknown is relatively short-lived as the boy only becomes a noteworthy shake up of emotional twists between the game’s masterminds near the very tail end, leaving only the wills to struggle painfully as they face themselves in forced contrition. The games Kramer quickly rigs up after the disbelief of being scammed are as industrial medieval and terrifyingly tense as any other “Saw” but unlike the other installments where Jigsaw has planned and engineered meticulously each game, these new set of trap trials are quickly welded and mechanically put together in a blink of an eye, or at least it seems, with no real show for the time put into the turnaround from fraud to fear and that lack of attention can seriously dull “Saw’s” already serrated credibility. 

Saw X” arrives onto a 2-disc and digital combo set from Lionsgate home video.  The Blu-ray is an AVC encoded, high-definition 1080p, BD50 and the DVD is MPEG2 encoded, DVD9 and both formats present the film in a 1.85:1 widescreen.  Through the lens of franchise newcomer Nick Matthews, there’s a sense that the “Spoonful of Sugar” director of photography tries to reproduce some of the style of the first six of David A. Armstrong’s steely industrial color palette but emulating more of his own personal choices to match the out-of-the-city harsh blues and greys for more warmer tones, like mustard yellow, but those progressive hues establish in the second half after really teetering on a natural lens and a harsh saturating tints, such as when John Kramer enters the surgical cube and is bathed in a navy blue hue that eliminates details entirely but only for that tinted moment.  For the rest of the picture, details are grisly good with lots of medium-to-extreme closeups to detail out exposed anatomy of what makes “Saw” rotate so well.  Charlie Clouser returns to score the tenth film on an English Dolby Atmos mix with Dolby Digital TrueHD 7.1 and 5.1 Spanish and French options available.  A really potent and powerful recreation of fidelity scores well for Clouser who recaptures the original crescendo of the final twist while keeping an industrial discordance floating behind the storyline with rising volume during trap countdowns that never interferences with the range of sounds or depth between each of the character sand the traps and the characters.  Dialogue is clean as a whistle and balances perfectly on that serrated slack line of a chaotic countdown to one’s own demise.  English descriptive audio and English SDH are available with regular English, Spanish, and French subtitles also included.  Special features include an audio commentary by director Kevin Greutert, cinematographer Nick Matthews, and production designer Anthony Stabley, a Reawakening documentary that discusses how the prequel was actually “Saw 9” but was shelved for the Chris Rock produced spin-off and how the sequel evolves since it’s rejuvenation years later, there’s a drawing inspiration look into bringing the series to Mexico and all its unique culture and mythos, makeup department trap tests, deleted scenes surrounding more depth between Kramer and Amanda, and the theatrical trailer. On the outside features, a slightly embossed titled and eye-sucking trap victim grace the rigid cardboard O-slipcover, keeping true to most of the “Saw” theme traps in home video posters and home video art, with the traditional Amaray cover art sporting the same design without the embossing. Along with the digital code insert, the two discs are housed separated on each side of the case, both pressed with the same Aztecan-inspired circular saw. The Lionsgate release is locked on region A North American playback with a runtime of 118-minutes and is rated R for sequences of grisly bloody violence and torture, language, and some drug use. ”Saw X” breaks many of its own traits like set not in a city and doesn’t have an incorporated investigation parallel but, in the same breath, feels very much like a back to basics, not only in proximity to the original “Saw” story and with the return of familiar faces and characters, but also in John Kramer’s preadolescence in figuring out and shaping himself to what he would become as the notorious Jigsaw Killer. 

Become A Part of the Game in “Saw X” on 4k/Bluray/DVD

EVIL Wants Your Brain Fluid! “Vile” reviewed! (MVD Visual / Blu-ray)

Posted by Steven Lewis on

These “Vile” Atrocities are now on Blu-ray!

What was supposed to be a relaxing camping trip amongst friends has turned into a torturous nightmare when four friends wake up to find themselves in the company of five strangers in a basement and learn they’ve all been kidnapped for a purpose.  Behind the illicit arrangement is an illegal drug manufacture whose formula is produced from the byproduct of the brain’s fear and pain induced chemicals.  With a 22-hour clock counting down from the first act of violence, the puzzled lot must fill a 100% quota before time runs out in order to be set free from the reinforced house they awoke in and the only way to do that is by hurting each other to fill the vials connected to the backside of their heads.  Framing a plan, a vote proceeds a numerical order of voluntary participation of torture, each contributing a fraction of the pain percentage needed to survive and be free, but egos, fears, and secrets cost them more than a few moments of unbearable pain.   

Before becoming Paramount Network’s golden nugget for creating the more recent acclaimed American television drama with shows like “Yellowstone,” “1883,” “1923,” “Tulsa King,” and “Special Ops:  Lioness,” Taylor Sheridan had first directed a small-time horror movie over ten years ago in 2011.  The title “Vile,” a play on words used to not only describe the cruel atrocities done from one character to another but also alluding to vial containers used to fill up with fear and pain fluid, is the brainchild of scriptwriters Eric Beck and Rob Kowsaluk.  Certainly, a different tone compared to hardnosed westerners and high-profile casted thrillers, Sheridan filmmaking roots from “Vile” mold his next stage directions of cruel character dynamics.  Beck produces the feature with Noël K. Cohan (“Into the Void”), Tina Pavlides (“100,000 Zombie Heads”), and Kelly Andrea Rubin (“Skeeter”) with presumably father Larry Beck footing some of the funding under the LLC of Vile Entertainment in association with Bosque Ranch Productions and Signature Entertainment.

An ensemble cast thrusts strangers into the throes of do-or-die but amongst the cast of characters, a delicate introduction of a core four put forth the wheels in motion of the sick extraction technique all in the name of drugs and profit.  The preliminary meet-and-greet of Nick (Eric Beck), Tayler (April Matson, “Primrose Lane”), Tony (Akeem Smith, “Holla II”), and Kai (Elisha Skorman) sets up love interests, Tayler’s secret pregnancy, Kai’s drug problem, and a playfully semi-morbid game of would you rather that foreshadows another choice pick of torture later the group has to contend with when joined with the other five test subjects – a dark and cryptic Greg (Rob Kirkland), a subtly anxious Julian (Ian Bohen, “5 Souls”), a selfish hothead Tara (Maya Hazen, “Shrooms”), a young and frightened Lisa (Heidi Mueller) and a level-headed Sam (Greg Cipes, “Deep Dark Canyon”). The variety of character provides varying shades of distrust, betrayal, and hope as factions form and convictions are about-faced, jostling those steadfast at first and solidifying principals for those teetering on the edge.  As whole, the cast works well together to provide adequate and satisfying suspicion as well as selling a particular attitude despite a couple of red herrings that are hidden really well within the framework. As individuals, lots of the dialogue pertains to self-explanatory states of the obvious that stick out like a sore thumb of colloquial filler with a story set in one location with the same nine people for approx. an hour long. ”Vile’s” cast rounds out with McKenzie Westmore and the unmistakable Maria Olsen (“I Spit on Your Grave 2: Deja Vu”) in a procedure-nothing televised head. 

As much as I disfavor comparing one film to another outside of sequels, series, or franchises, “Vile’s” voice is lost as an individual. Seven years prior, James Wan and Leigh Whannell began what would become one of the biggest contemporary horror franchises with “Saw,” spanning sequels through two decades, and concluding, thus so far, with this past year’s “Saw X.” What does this have to do with “Vile?” ”Vile” follows much of the same formula Wan and Whannel concocted in the earlier 2000s with a very to-the-manual approach of “Saw’s” collaring of individuals, media announcing a timed-task, and the players of the game have to hurt themselves, or others, in order to be set free. Fundamentally different with “Vile” has more to do pure greed and profit at the expense of those unfortunate to be in the path of profiteers whereas “Saw” forces transgressors into rebirth through pain and suffering. ”Vile” is also not as explicitly graphic with much of the torturous violence done out of sight, off screen, or in a blink of an eye. Nevertheless, the intriguingly staid premise takes the human condition to the limit and steps across the line of no return of committing what is self-destructively necessary to survive. Beck and Kowsaluk tweak the formula by a narrow margin but the manner of how the narrative plays out distances “Vile” to almost unitary means. For example, “Saw” almost always had a dual storyline that eventually converges with a shocking twist-tie conclusion. ”Vile’s” straightforward with a singular storyline that isn’t dichotomized with a parallel storyline, a periodization storyline, or any other type of storyline to be a crutch for the other, leaving audiences in the undivided present that’s an around-the-clock time crunch to live or die by the hands of themselves or at the mercy of others, and with a palpable enough twist that you’ll kick yourself in the chin for not predicting it ahead of time. 

“Vile” comes to Blu-ray from MVD Visual on the company’s Marquee Collection label. The AVC encoded, 1080p High-Definition, BD25 has the film presented in a widescreen 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Limited to a two-tone grading of steely blues and canary yellows, picture quality range has spasmodic bursts of interiority to agreeable presentations. More of the pre-ensnarement night scenes appear granulated by macroblocking, degrading the image to pre-high definition pixelated rate. Bitrate decoding jumps sporadically from mid-teens to mid-30Mbps, most likely due to an unstable data compression transfer. Compression appears better, though not flawless, later in the runtime with tighter contouring and a finer detail on a grungy, dirty, dilapidated house where the main set takes footing. The English Dolby Digital 5.1 and the uncompressed LCPM 2.0 are the available audio options, both of which lack commodious conviction with a suppressed volume. While the dialogue renders sufficiently with discernibility and clarity, much of the eye-averting torture sound design, the milieu audio, and even the rock-hard rock soundtrack retains an undeliberate lo-fi quality. English subtitles are optionally available. Special features include two deleted scenes that expand on more of the earlier character interactions, a behind-the-scene moment of director Taylor Sheridan mopping the kitchen set and singing, and the feature trailer plus other MVD Marquee Collection trailers. Tangible features include a cardboard O-slipcover, first pressings only, vaunting the nastiness to come and, again, appropriates a “Saw” cover with that nastiness of an extracted, bloody tooth in a pair of vice grip, a nod to the “Saw III” poster/home video art. The Amary case has reversible cover art with the original “Vile” artwork on the inside. The unrated, 88-minute MVD Marquee Collection feature has a region free playback. If “Saw” is deluxe imperial crab, then “Vile” is the suitable imitation equivalent with a steady pace of group-wrenching contrition and contempt that forgoes the games for straight up blunt force trauma. 

These “Vile” Atrocities are now on Blu-ray!