History Film / SawX

** As soon as Diego wakes up in his trap and spots John observing, he screams that he "told [John] what [he] wanted to know". [[spoiler:The FlashbackMontageRealization at the climax reveals, he ratted out Cecilia and Parker.]]

* DoorClosesEnding: Inverted. Many other films in the franchise ended with The Jigsaw Killer himself, an apprentice, or [[Film/Spiral2021 a copycat]] slamming a door closed (or some variant thereof) on the final victim. This film instead ends with [[spoiler:John, Amanda and Carlos opening a pair of double doors leading to the bright, sunny outdoors as dawn approaches]].

* DoorClosesEnding: Inverted. Many other films in the franchise have ended with The Jigsaw Killer himself, an apprentice, or [[Film/Spiral2021 a copycat]] slamming a door closed (or some variant thereof) on the final victim. This film instead ends with [[spoiler:John, Amanda and Carlos opening a pair of double doors leading to the bright, sunny outdoors as dawn approaches]].

* DoorClosesEnding: Inverted. Every other film in the franchise has ended with The Jigsaw Killer himself, an apprentice, or [[Film/Spiral2021 a copycat]] slamming a door closed (or some variant thereof) on the final victim. This film instead ends with [[spoiler:John, Amanda and Carlos opening a pair of double doors, leading to the bright, sunny outdoors as dawn approaches]].

The film was released on September 29, 2023. Following its critical and commercial success, [[https://variety.com/2023/film/news/saw-11-announced-release-date-1235834437/ the development of an eleventh installment was announced]] just under three months later; titled ''Saw XI'', the film is scheduled for release on September 27, 2024.

** This film marks the first time that a proper game trap has been introduced visually and commenced with no monologue from Jigsaw prefacing it and setting the terms of the test -- [[spoiler:this is because ''Jigsaw'' is placed into the trap, another first for the series!]]

** [[spoiler: Henry Kessler's scar turning out to be false]] is probably a reference to Bobby Dagen from ''Film/Saw3D'' scarring himself to make his false story of escaping a Jigsaw trap more believable.

* TheCameo: [[spoiler: Mark Hoffman returns in the mid-credits scene, having helped John locate [[UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom Henry, the patient that set him on the path to the clinic]], for the purposes of [[LaserGuidedKarma trapping him]].]]
* CentralTheme: Mortality and cynicism. At the start of the film, John Kramer, the pessimistic Jigsaw Killer, proclaims his desire to fight his cancer at every cost, and when he thinks he is cured, he begins to abandon his Jigsaw career out of hope for life. He is shattered and seemingly irrevocably returned to it once he learns he's been completely scammed. As he puts his scammers through a game, he has to break it to Amanda that he can't keep fighting and that he is dying and will leave her alone, and in the last act, [[spoiler: Cecelia puts an innocent boy against John in a trap, causing John to fly against the expectations he has for his victims and refuse to fight against the trap, forcing the controls out of the boy's hands and insisting on letting it take his own life to save the boy if that's what it has to come to.]] However, [[spoiler: Carlos takes control of the trap at one point to try sparing John, a noble act that seems to reignite some hope in him to fight for his health and his life...and to keep up his twisted moral mission as Jigsaw, which continues in the later chronological films.]]

* CoverInnocentEyesAndEars: Downplayed. Amanda covers Carlos's eyes to protect him from [[spoiler:Cecilia and Parker fighting to the death while being slowly poisoned]]...although [[spoiler:he's in a room already containing multiple grisly dead bodies, and once Cecilia kills Parker and is left trapped, Amanda doesn't cover Carlos's eyes as the two of them and John leave the room]].
* DeathByMaterialism: After [[spoiler: Cecilia and Parker overpower Kramer and Amanda, they try to collect their money instead of escaping. This leads to them getting caught in the final trap and their inevitable deaths.]]

** John designed the Bloodboard Trap [[spoiler:expecting Cecilia and Parker to place himself and Amanda in it. He never expected that Carlos would show up and Cecila would be sadistic enough to put him into it]].

* DoubleMeaning: When [[spoiler: Parker Sears arrives at the site of the climactic series of games]], he screams that he's come for his money, [[spoiler: implying that he's yet another cancer patient who was cheated by Cecilia's con. When it turns out that he's in on the con, the meaning of his words changes -- he's come for the money that John and Amanda have taken from Cecilia, and, by proxy, himself]].

** Fellow scam victim Parker Sears has figured out Pederson tricked him, and while he comes to the factory to kill her, he wants no part in the graphic deaths Jigsaw inflicts. [[spoiler: While he's revealed to be in on it with Pederson, he's still disturbed when Pederson reveals just how sociopathic she is by claiming she felt nothing when her fellow trap victims died, murders Gabriela, and worst of all, forces a literal child into a Jigsaw trap, with multiple shots of his face showing just how disturbed he is during the latter. It's implied that the reason why he rushes to the office to secure the money rather than ensure John dies is because he doesn't want to watch Carlos die, either.]]
** John lets the hospital janitor go when he catches him in the act of theft, only imagining putting him in a trap, though this may have been a combination of both his imminent death making him feel merciful, and the janitor having a pang of conscience and not going through with the theft after all. [[spoiler: He's also disgusted with Cecilia for murdering Gabriela after she survived her trap and putting an innocent child in one of them, and ends up TakingTheBullet for the poor kid.]]

** [[spoiler: When Cecilia gets the upper hand over John at one point, John genuinely tries to plead with her to get Gabriela some help after Gabriela has won her game and is badly injured. Cecilia responds by killing Gabriela out of petty spite. She also decides to kill Carlos or at the least make sure he is harmed just because she knows he is an innocent kid and also because John got along with him.]]

** Eventually, [[spoiler: Pederson reveals herself to be even worse than John when she forces Carlos, a ''child'', into a trap alongside John just to spite him. Said trap was a deliberately non-lethal one, but she and Carlos didn't know that.]]
** Before Valentina's abduction, [[spoiler: she was in the midst of getting raped by a man who refused to pay her for prostitution services. Said man is clubbed by Amanda because [[TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou John wants Valentina to participate in the movie's game]]]].

** As soon as Diego wakes up in his trap and spots John observing, he screams that he "told [John] what [he] wanted to know". [[spoiler: The FlashbackMontageRealization at the climax reveals, he ratted out Cecilia and Parker.]]
** During the capture montage, Amanda isn't explicitly shown as the Pig Mask on Cecilia's roof, possibly alluding to [[spoiler: Hoffman's presence.]]
* GoryDiscretionShot: [[spoiler: When Mateo fails to complete his test in time, the Tlaloc mask closes on his face, roasting his head alive. We hear him scream and see steam coming from the mask, but we never see the end result.]]

* HalfwayPlotSwitch: Tonally, at least. Someone unfamiliar with the ''Saw'' franchise would watch this movie and, barring [[spoiler:one ImagineSpot]] right near the start of the film, think it was a mundane medical drama about an old man fighting against cancer. [[spoiler: And then TheReveal happens, and it turns right back into a typical ''Saw'' film.]]
* HeelFaceTurn: A quick subversion. After receiving his treatment and being given a new lease on life, John seems to consider retiring from his serial killer ways, ripping out sketches of a torture device he was designing and throwing them away. [[spoiler: Then he discovers his treatment was a scam, and he gets right back into it.]]

** [[DownplayedTrope Downplayed.]] John claims that his reasoning for putting Cecilia and her team in his latest game isn't about revenge, a claim that's dubious ''at best,'' given his track record through the rest of the series. Cecilia even [[TheReasonYouSuckSpeech calls bullshit]] on his claim [[spoiler: once she gains the upper hand]]. However, the fact remains that [[AssholeVictim everyone involved]] in this game ''absolutely'' deserves some kind of comeuppance for the scam they're pulling on innocent victims.

* IntergenerationalFriendship: Not too long after arriving in Mexico, John befriends Carlos when he fixes the wheel on his bicycle, and in the process, they dissolve the language barrier between themselves. John is easily old enough to be Carlos' grandfather, but they bond so well that it makes John feel like he's actually raising Carlos. [[spoiler: In the climax, they both end up in the same trap, and both of them pull their levers hard to minimize the other's suffering.]]

* KansasCityShuffle: [[spoiler: Cecilia's]] true trap is a case of this. [[spoiler: She believes that the Seesaw Trap is meant for her, and once [[EvilAllAlong Parker]] shows up to back her up, she forces John into it while she and Parker make their way to the control room to steal back the money she scammed from John. Except [[OutGambitted John already knows about Parker thanks to Diego,]] meaning once Cecilia grabs the money, she triggers her ''[[DeadlyGas real]]'' [[DeadlyGas trap.]] As an added bonus, it also deactivates the trap that she forced John into.]]
* TheKillerBecomesTheKilled: A first for the franchise in which [[spoiler: John himself is forced into a trap. Cecilia gloats about subjecting him to one of his own games, and does so in hopes that it would either kill him or force him to kill an innocent child (Carlos) she put in the trap alongside him simply to spite him. However, [[BatmanGambit John predicted he would get put into the trap]] and escapes shortly after.]]
* {{Leitmotif}}: An interesting case. The main remix of "Hello Zepp" that plays at the end of the film (entitled "Zepp X" on the official soundtrack) hews closely to the variation heard in the first two films, while the variant heard during TheStinger (entitled "Post Credits X") incorporates the brass motif heard most prominently in ''Film/Saw3D'' to signify [[spoiler: Hoffman's presence]].

* {{Motif}}: Medical operations. John Kramer is scammed by fake doctors who go as far as to pretend they're doing an operation on him, and he retaliates by putting the scammers through his own mock medicine. [[spoiler: Diego has to perform an "extraction" by cutting bombs out of his arms with scalpels, Valentina has to perform a self-amputation with a Gigli saw and a bone marrow extraction, Mateo has to do brain surgery on himself, Gabriela must break her own bones to escape a medical radiation machine's beam, and the bloodboarding trap and control room trap seem to invoke blood transfusions and anesthetics in concept, respectively.]] Furthermore, his game begins with every person present in the facility in one room watching the target at hand playing their game while unable to act, thus mocking the concept of an operating theater.
* MuggingTheMonster: The central premise of the film is a group of con artists picking the wrong guy to scam and paying dearly for it. As [[spoiler:Hoffman]] says in the trailer, "Out of all the men to cheat, you picked ''John Kramer''?". In the film proper, [[spoiler: he]] says it to [[spoiler:Henry]], and follows it up with "I'd call that... epic bad luck." to hammer the point home.
* NeckSnap: [[spoiler: Cecilia presses on Gabriela's neck with her shoe until it snaps, to Amanda's horror.]]

** The trailer includes a sentence spoken via voice-over -- "According to these scans, the tumor was never removed" -- which never surfaces in the film. John simply figures it out by removing his bandage once the nature of the scam becomes apparent.

* OffWithHisHead: Valentina's trap involves her having to cut her leg off and extract enough bone marrow from the leg to weigh down a porous pressure plate, lest she has her head chopped off by a wire. [[spoiler: She fails, with obvious results.]] The start of her trap has John explaining this outcome to her in a somewhat {{expospeak|Gag}} manner.

* OutGambitted: [[spoiler: Parker is revealed to not actually be another scammed patient but instead someone's partner (and Cecilia's lover) involved in the medical scheme. Later in the movie, this is followed up by John and Amanda being revealed to have known about Parker all this time and intentionally lured him to the building. Likewise, when Parker and Cecilia seemingly have the upper hand over John and Amanda, it was actually all part of the game for John and leads to the real final trap for both Cecilia and Parker.]]

** Likewise, John's [[spoiler: response to Gabriela's survival is asking Amanda to immediately take her to the hospital, looking in sadness later on when Cecilia kills her]].

** As soon as Diego wakes up in his trap and spots John observing, he screams that he "told [John] what [he] wanted to know". [[spoiler: As the flashbacks later reveal, he ratted out Cecilia and Sears.]]
** During the flashback[=/=]capture montage, Amanda isn't shown as the Pig Mask on Cecilia's roof, [[spoiler: further alluding to Hoffman's presence.]]

* ForegoneConclusion: Being a prequel to ''Saw II'', we know Parker and Cecilia will fail to kill John and Amanda.

* BusmansHoliday: In this film, John Kramer, a delusional serial killer who targets people who are "wasting their lives" or committed serious crimes and escaped justice, takes a sabbatical in order to focus on his health and goes to Mexico to undergo an experimental procedure to cure his cancer. After discovering that he was conned alongside many other victims by the supposed doctors, John starts another game involving the conmen, to both punish and "rehabilitate" them.

* WhamShot: [[spoiler:When Cecilia and Parker appear to have defeated Jigsaw in his own game, Cecilia walks over to grab the bag in the control room...which triggers a tripwire and reveals a 10 minute countdown timer, activating their actual trap.]]

** In terms of plot, ''Saw X'' is the only film out of the series to have no PoliceProcedural storyline or elements. It's also the first entirely linear movie in the franchise, with no flashbacks or {{Sequencing Deception}}s; everything in the whole runtime is presented in a single, forward motion. Towards the end, however, there are flashbacks and OnceMoreWithClarity scenes revealing [[spoiler: John’s final victory over Cecilia]].