Saw X Trailer: Welcome Back To John Kramer's Trap House

Long before M3GAN danced into our lives, one of the creepiest little automatons in horror was Billy the Puppet, star of the "Saw" movies. Less than two decades after James Wan's twisted tale brought Billy into the world, the perennially successful franchise has reached its tenth installment — and Lionsgate has now dropped the first trailer for "Saw X."

In keeping with the series' tradition of ping-ponging around its own timeline, "Saw X" takes us back to just past the beginning. It's set between the events of "Saw" and "Saw II," which means that Tobin Bell is back as the whispery-voiced villain/god of the Jigsaw realm, John Kramer. Per the official synopsis, "Saw X" follows John as he "travels to Mexico for a risky and experimental medical procedure in hopes of a miracle cure for his cancer." When he learns that "the entire operation is a scam to defraud the most vulnerable," he decides that the con artists would benefit from some gentle moral guidance.

The "Saw X" team brought some of John Kramer's latest inventions to the Midsummer Scream horror convention, sharing photos of a dangerous-looking head-focused trap to Twitter (or X, as it has now been rebranded, for reasons unrelated to the "Saw" franchise). During a panel to promote the movie, attended by director Kevin Greutert, production designer Anthony Stabley, cinematographer Nick Matthews, and producer Oren Koules, the trailer for "Saw X" was unveiled, and it dropped online soon afterwards.

Up to this point in the "Saw" franchise John Kramer has mostly been an antagonist, albeit one with his own twisted moral code. But in "Saw X," he is "absolutely the protagonist" according to producer Oren Koules, who added that "this is John Kramer's story as a human." And like a lot of humans, he has hobbies: some people like to go fishing, some people like to engineer death machines to tear people apart with a flair of poetic justice.

From snapping fingers to a trap that requires the victim to cut out a piece of their own brain, all sweetly serenaded by The Hollies' "The Air That I Breathe," the trailer for "Saw X" promises to deliver the horrors that fans of the franchise have come to know and love, destined to one day be uploaded to YouTube as a "Saw X traps compilation" for the convenience of those who don't watch these movies for the plot. After a harrowing few years in the real world, perhaps some outlandishly gory hijinks on the big screen will do us all some good.

"Saw X" arrives in theaters on September 29, 2023.