Is Saw X Scary? The Verdict and the Whole Plot

A cancer cure with no scar

Doctors tell John Kramer that advanced brain cancer gives him a few months. At a cancer support group he befriends Henry Kessler, who says an experimental Norwegian treatment from a group led by Dr. Finn Pederson cured him. John contacts the doctor's daughter Cecilia, who sends him to her clinic outside Mexico City. There he meets Cecilia and her team: the anesthesiologist Mateo, the nurse Valentina and Dr. Cortez, along with two patients, Gabriela and Parker, and Carlos, the caretaker's young son, who becomes John's friend. After his surgery Cecilia tells him he is cancer-free. He buys Gabriela a gift, returns to the clinic and finds it empty. He then finds a video faking his brain surgery, takes off his bandages and finds no scar. The whole thing is a scam.

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The taxi driver was also the doctor

John works out that Dr. Cortez was actually Diego, the taxi driver who drove him, in disguise. He kidnaps Diego, questions him, and sets him a game: pipe bombs are lashed to his arms and he has to cut through his own flesh to get them off. Diego completes it. Meanwhile Amanda Young, John's apprentice, helps him kidnap Cecilia, Mateo, Valentina and Gabriela, who wake up back at the clinic as players in his games.

The staff meets the equipment

This stretch is the middle of the movie and the hardest part to watch, so here is each trap before you see it. Valentina has to saw off her own leg with a Gigli saw and collect enough bone marrow to trip a scale. She gets the leg off but not enough marrow, and a second saw kills her. Cecilia reaches her phone with a rope improvised from Valentina's intestines and calls for help, but Amanda shocks her and takes the phone. Parker breaks in demanding his money back and Amanda restrains him. Mateo has to drill a hole in his own skull and take out a piece of his brain, which is meant to dissolve in a beaker and release a key. He does it, but the tissue does not dissolve fast enough, and a heated mask clamps down on his face and kills him. Gabriela is hung from shackles and hit with radiation, and she has to break her own shackled limbs with a sledgehammer to get free. She does, and Parker then forces Amanda at gunpoint to release Cecilia.

Nobody at this clinic is who they said

Cecilia snaps Gabriela's neck and says the person she phoned for help was Parker, who is in on the scam. She makes John chain himself into the device that was meant for her, then chains Carlos opposite him because she is certain John will not harm a child. The device starts waterboarding them with blood. Meanwhile Parker and Cecilia go for their bag of stolen cash in John's control room and set off a tripwire that seals them inside and frees John and Carlos. Flashbacks show that Diego had named every scammer, Henry and Parker included, and that John manipulated Cecilia into bringing Parker to the facility. The room fills with chemical gas and has one ventilation hole big enough for a single head, so Cecilia and Parker fight over it.