Saw X traps are so brutal they made the director “nervous”

Saw X is not going to be for the faint-hearted. The tenth movie in the franchise features traps so brutal, they made director Kevin Greutert “nervous”. Gulp. 

The Saw horror franchise is synonymous with gore, most notably its array of intricate and brutal traps, which force characters to make horrifying choices or endure intense pain to survive the games from the sick and twisted mind of Jigsaw.

Clearly there’s still a market for its unique brand of grim. Though the reviews aren’t always positive, ever since the first movie dropped in 2004, Saw has enjoyed commercial success, grossing more than $1 billion from box office and retail sales across nine films.

And with the tenth entry set to drop this month, we’ve not got long to wait and see what terrifying treats the franchise has in store for us next. Ahead of its release, director Kevin Greutert has teased what’s to come – and it ain’t gonna be pretty.

Saw X director “nervous” about brutal new traps

In a conversation with SFX magazine, Greutert opened up about the traps for Saw X. “I was very nervous about some of the things that we did; nervous on a safety level and nervous thinking it was just going to look ridiculous,” he said.

From the trailer alone, which dropped at the end of July, we were shown flashes of fingers being snapped back one-by-one, a man drilling into his own skull (perhaps without anesthetic), and – as was teased in the first poster – a poor soul wearing goggles fitted with long, clear tubes leading to his eyes.

Elaborating on the difficulty of creating fresh traps for each new film, Greutert said: “It’s really, really hard. Every year when I’ve been told we’re doing another shoot I’m like, ‘How do we do it?’ Because a lot of it starts with the script, but sometimes the traps and cells are very shorthand.

“In the script, sometimes they are just as they appear, but usually, there are a lot of long meetings between assorted people – the writers, the production designer, the actors – where you just sit and hash through it.”

Inspiration for those Saw traps

As for where the team find inspiration, the filmmaker explained: “I have lots of books on medieval torture machines and other dark stuff, and sometimes we just pore through it and shoot ideas off each other.

“Some of the traps have evolved quite a lot from how they started. And then you have to think about how to actually pull it off.”

Following his “nervous” comment, Greutert noted that he was “far more so than on the other Saw movies,” adding: “We had to do a lot of testing. Mostly in pre-production, but we wound up having to split the shoot into two parts – three weeks in November and three weeks in January – because it was so complicated.

“We had to make so many prosthetics and machines, and over Christmas, we spent the entirety of it figuring this stuff out.”

And if that doesn’t get Saw fans hyped for the horror that’s in store for us, we don’t know what will.

Saw X drops in cinemas on September 29, 2023. You can read more about the movie here, and check out our other horror coverage below: 

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