Warning: SPOILERS lie ahead for Saw X!

The Jigsaw franchise is back and better than ever with Saw X. The latest horror sequel sees Tobin Bell returns as John Kramer just weeks after the original movie as he is diagnosed with terminal brain cancer with only months to live. After being conned by a group of scammers into believing he was cured with an experimental medical procedure, Kramer sets out for his most personal game yet.

Alongside Bell, Saw X's cast features both franchise vets Shawnee Smith and Costas Mandylor as well as newcomers Synnøve Macody Lund, Steven Brand, Renata Vaca, Joshua Okamoto, Octavio Hinojosa, Paulette Hernández, Jorge Briseño and Michael Beach. Also helmed by franchise mainstay Kevin Greutert, the new sequel gets the horror movie series back on track with an equally emotional and bloody story.

Related: Every Saw Movie Ranked, Worst To Best (Including Saw X)

Following the movie's successful release, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with cinematographer Nick Matthews to discuss Saw X, his biggest goals for the sequel, recreating the original feel and visuals of the early installments and his collaborative relationship with director Kevin Greutert.

Nick Matthews Talks Saw X

Screen Rant: I'm very excited to talk with you about Saw X, I watched it over the weekend and was just so thrilled by it, it's probably tied for my second favorite with Saw II. How did you get involved with becoming the cinematographer for this one?

Nick Matthews: Yeah, this actually came my representative in narrative, Alex Franklin, he had worked on some of the early Saw films at Lionsgate before starting his career as an agent. So, when they were looking for a DP, he's thought of me and sent them my name, I think probably because I had shot a movie in Mexico City before, and also because some of the music video work I had done. And some of the film work I had done was kind of — I shot this movie called Cuck, that was kind of a gritty film. Then, I had done a horror film for Shudder called Spoonful of Sugar, which was not really a Saw-like [movie], that doesn't really lead you to think, "Oh, this person could do a Saw movie".

So, yeah, he called me one day and was like, "I have something I think you'd be interested in. It's the latest Saw film." And then I interviewed with Kevin Greutert that evening, so I didn't really have a lot of time to process it. We chatted probably for an hour and a half, and then I gave him the names of some directors I had worked with before, and then I was hired very shortly thereafter, maybe a couple days. So it was pretty whirlwind, I would say.

Were you a big fan of the franchise prior to that process?

Nick Matthews: When I was in high school, I grew up in a very fundamentalist, conservative religious house, so I didn't go to the movie theater. So, I was in college, and it was very much something where I had to fight to watch things that weren't censored, but when Saw came out, I was just so enamored with the possibility of watching it, it sounded intense, and gruesome and scary. There's something macabre in the Bible, it's a very macabre book, and it's got a lot of violence in it, so I think there was something about it that compelled me. Then, when I saw the first film, I was just really taken by it. I rented it from Blockbuster, my younger brother and I watched it together, and then I think I watched Saw II and Saw III, kind of in that same era. Then, I went to college and just started watching stuff like No Country for Old Men, and There Will Be Blood, and kind of went on a different path.

But I would say that there was a part of me that was really connected to those movies and what they meant in my life in that time. So, to be able to do something like this felt very [special] — I used to work in this religious organization called the Creation Museum when I was in high school and college, my life has gone in a different direction, as you can see, but even back as far as then, I would do the Jigsaw voice and be wandering around the halls of this place. [Chuckles] Yeah, there's a real love for it, and what it means in culture and in cinema, and then I'm a massive fan of Se7en. I've always sort of said Saw feels like Se7en by way of a nu metal music video, it's bold, and it's loud, and it's sort of exclamation points everywhere. So, I did have a familiarity, but I went back and rewatched a lot of them — actually, I only watched 1, 2, 3, and 6, because Kevin was like, "Focus on these, these are the ones that are critical," so I didn't watch any of the others in preparation, but I've seen them all since.

I'm curious what that process was like, bringing your own vision for what you wanted the movie to look like while also working with someone who has been across this whole franchise?

Nick Matthews: Kevin is absolutely a gem of a person, he's brilliant, he's methodical, he's fastidious, he's very funny. He's easy to work for, and easy to collaborate with. I think he really gets the best out of his collaborators, because he gives them a lot of trust, but he also tries to hire well. Kevin understands the franchise, and he also understands the people behind the franchise really well. I think, ultimately, that those two pieces are essential in making a Saw film, and making something that can both speak to what the fans are interested in, can speak to what the business financiers need and want, and then also, ultimately, our goal is always, "How do we make something that's really great, and something that's really entertaining?"

I think, for Kevin, I felt very much in safe hands, because the way he edits is he goes through every single piece of footage and sub clips everything that's potentially usable, and then whittles away and then whittles away and whittles away. That's his process on every movie he cuts, but I think that could also describe how he works as a director. He tested every trap three to four times, he knew that little pieces on the day, because you only get like a day and a half. You can't rent the crane every day, you can't get the prosthetics costs on tens of thousands of dollars to produce, and you can't shoot them again and again and again. So, you really have to have a very thorough plan, even just your order of events, working with, "Okay, we're gonna shoot the piece, and then we're gonna apply this makeup, or this prosthetic, and then we're going to shoot this piece while that's being applied, just so there's minimal downtime as possible, as few problems as possible," and you still have challenges that arise.

Kevin was just fantastic, he understands, in order for the traps to work, you have to have a very linear, upfront sort of explanation via Jigsaw. Then also, the cutting is very straightforward, you want the audience to understand the stakes, so that they're able to invest in it and place themselves there. It's those sorts of things, but he also knows the characters, he's just an encyclopedia of knowledge, really, and also a genuine cinephile. He's very much someone who our conversations could dance from Jodorowsky to something silly. Part of what's so great about him is he does have a unique perspective. We were always looking at what's funny and absurd, both in the process of making it and also in the film, and so, I think we both understand that the movies come from giallo roots, there's a bit of an expressionism, and some camp and humor. Like, it's funny to think about, "How does Jigsaw operate Billy? It's 2005, like, is this remote controlled? Is he just standing there with fishing line? Like, what's going on?"

We have a good time, and I think for me, I knew when I was hired that the franchise had sort of deviated from what made the early films so successful. They tried other things, they tried other visual style, some were shot in anamorphic, and things like that, and so Kevin and I talked about it. We really wanted it to feel like a fit between 1 and 2, and so a lot of what I was trying to do was take the palates of 1 and 2 and find a way to bring them into this film, but then give them their own arc. For me, a lot of what that looks like was a lot with practicals. That warehouse was completely decked out with probably 50 to 100 practical lights that have all been placed within housing, so every light you see is a film light, but that's an LED that's controllable from a digital console, but everything has been placed in sight of [the camera]. I had them set dress it within the space, so everywhere you look, the camera can look anywhere and it's all safe, it's all camera safe.

And then, for stuff where we first reveal Billy and we first reveal Amanda, I know these are big hero moments in the story, so this is my chance to light Billy and be like, "Aha!" John's very theatrical, he's designed these traps to specifically speak to the moral issues of each character, so I think there's a degree of flexibility with that. I sort of took this approach of John has all these traps on circuit timers, so when they power up, lights associated with them power up, and when the trap ends, the lights associated with them shut off. That kind of gave us the ability to change the lighting without it being like completely like John being a DJ of the lights. So part of it for me was I wanted to take that oger-jaundicey yellow, I wanted to take that sort of poisonous or cynical green of the early films and some of the fluorescent blues, but I wanted to bring them into our film in a way that didn't feel so monochromatic. It's the same challenge that the first Saw film has, and I guess technically the second, but it's predominantly one space, how do you keep it visually interesting the entire time, and then, also, how do you craft something that makes you feel like you need a tetanus shot? So that was kind of the idea, and then eventually, you get to the bloodboarding trap, and for me, it was like, "I want to cycle back to what's going to make the blood read the best, well, blue would"

Also the red up [facing] light was coming out of the trap, and it was like, "Let's go giallo, and let's just bring these big color strokes into the movie." So, when the emergency lights go off, and we sort of have this big reveal towards the end, I really wanted the whole room to be bathed in red, so I remember when I asked the production designer for 50 emergency spinners, he was like, "What the f--k, 50?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I need one in every corner, fill all the control room." Part of the challenge is you're shooting the control room before you shoot the game space, because it just doesn't make sense to move all your crew up and then down, and then up and down, you eat time that way. So, the majority of the control room was shot, and then we shot out most of the game room, so we had to really know [our schedule]. Like, I had a document that I built myself, I had a written document and a visual document, because my crew was also all Mexican and I don't speak Spanish, and most of them didn't speak English, so there was a bit of translation [gap], just playing off each other.

The goal was to try and take what the early films did really well, we shot at a high AASA, we added grain in post. I think we could have gone further with it now that I've seen it twice in theaters, but at the same time, digital cinema with fake film grain on it is just [not the same]. I really wanted us to do a film out, I wanted us to print to 35 or something, so we could have more texture. It reads, like I saw it in the theater and was like, "We could have pushed it harder." We shot modern glasses, but they have a vintage quality, and then we used filtration, this thing called a Pearlescent 1, and that's kind of what gives the film a little bit of that blue meanness, and that texture. But I think because the contrast is so steeped in the movie, that sort of softness and elegance, that doesn't end up feeling too like Barbara Walters or anything like that. It's still gritty and scuzzy, something to take the digital [feel out]. For me, Spiral and Jigsaw are too clean, they're too modern for what we wanted, so it was, "How do we photographically bring in this dirtiness, this grittiness, this grime?" This is something that I specifically feel, but I'm very interested in photographing beauty and brutality, and I sort of love playing with both of those, and making one sort of fit into the other.

In this case, I think we also had the advantage of this is a very John Kramer story, and Saw has never gone there, so we were able to do more of a drama or character study to open the film, and almost a more traditional movie in a way. Then, the movie can kind of move from something that feels a little more Rembrandt and beautiful into these harsh downlights, and doing stuff that, honestly, I lost sleep over, because I was like, "This is so grotesque." Even just lighting, I wouldn't normally put an older woman in hard down light, that's just not how you light women. [Chuckles] But for this, it was like, "Well, they're sweaty and bloody, and it actually felt wrong to make it feel too cosmetic or glamorous." So it was also like, "No, this is actually the right choice for these sequences."

One of the things that I've always been curious about when it comes to shooting a Saw movie is, do you get dizzy when you have to do the shots of circling the person in the trap? Obviously, it's sped up in editing, but what is that process like for you in that moment filming as you're going around the victim multiple times?

Nick Matthews: [Chuckles] Yeah, so one of the things we [said was] like, "Look, this is such a Saw thing." They kind of got away from doing circular dolly track and some of those, for lack of a better word, stutter frame feeling in those flash frames, and we were like, "No, let's go back to it, let's bring it back." It's a great way to build intensity, it's a great way to make it feel visually kinetic, and so what we actually did for a lot of those stutter frames is shot under crank, so we shoot it at six frames a second, then we lengthen the shutter speed, so we'd shoot with a shutter speed of like 270 degree shutter, or I don't know what that'd do with the math. It basically gives it this really dreamy effect, and then when you play it back at 24, it's really sped up. And yeah, it's dizzying, like I was operating on the Eyeball Trap when we were doing all those [shots].

Because of the way our space was, we actually built the Eyeball Trap location underneath the control room, because we had to cheat and use different spaces to do different things, so we built it in there. It was actually very tough, because of the way the pillars were, we couldn't actually get a full-circle dolly track, so we ended up laying track mat, basically, and then doing it on that. So, my dolly grip is having to do that, but yeah, it's dizzying, but also, it's so fun, it's like really fun. I love like creating visually compelling [shots], I love doing stuff, like the lambda had to do this twist when the finger breaks, and it's, it's sort of like, "How do you create these big visual moments?" Even for some of them, like I ended up getting COVID at some point while they're shooting., so I when I came back from that I was like, "I can't operate a camera anymore," my energy was so tanked, so we hired operators. But even when we were shooting Mateo's Brain Surgery Trap, I had already set the lighting, and I saw what it looked like, and Kevin was working with our operators to set frames and get the piece of coverage we need, because we shot most of that in one day.

I have a little Blackmagic 6K camera, and I grabbed that and set it to six frames a second, and I was doing like lens whacking, where you just connect the lens from the sensor plane, and you're just kind of playing, which is a way to stimulate getting those film rollouts that they got in the early days of like shooting film. It'd roll out, and then they would use the rollout in the film, and so it's like playing with light leaks and stuff like that. So, all of the Brain Surgery Trap's stutter frame stuff was shot on my Blackmagic, just with me walking around while they're shooting other pieces, and I'm doing it because we just have to move like lightning. I don't really get grossed out by it while we're making it, because if there's a C stand holding an arm up and you're cutting the arm, what's in the frame is so upsetting, so sometimes, there'd be times when I would go and sit on monitor, just offset, so I could get a proper look at everything we're doing. And then I would be more icked out by that than being on set, where you're just like, "There's a person with a pump." It's all very controlled, and when you are destroying these — I don't know how much the prosthetics cost — tens of thousands of dollars, you're like, "I know why they cost that, because they're so good." And then you're like, "Yeah, we can't f--k this up."

I love how intimate a lot of the shots are in this movie, especially with John and Amanda, there are a lot more close-ups than we typically get in a Saw movie. I'm curious if that was your idea, or if that was Kevin's idea, and how you went about putting those together?

Nick Matthews: Yeah, it does have a lot of intimacy in this. Seeing it in on the big screen, even, I really felt that, like you. I think in a lot of ways, Kevin, when we first started talking about it, he was like, "In a lot of ways, Saw is a story told in close up." It's inserted shots of bone marrow, there's 4000 cuts in the movie. Many Saw films, they cut, and they cut, and they cut, and we even talked about shooting things more center punch similar to Mad Max, where if it's gonna cut, you want the audience to know where their eyes are gonna go. We captured in a 4:3 sensor plane, we framed for 1:85, but we knew we had the extra bits, and that was if Kevin needs to blow it up and change the framing, we need that and we want that available to us.

I think mostly as we were talking, because Kevin is an editor, and he thinks like an editor, part of it comes down to two things. One is we're shooting two cameras for everything, so how do you sneak in two cameras, you can either shoot cross coverage, or you can shoot one character and you shoot wide and tight. For us, we would do a mixture of that. I really lit this in a pretty 360 way, so we were actually shooting a lot of cross coverage, we were doing multiple cameras shooting different pieces in different places, we weren't just doing the traditional wide and tight on one side, and then turn around and do wide and tight. We had two cameras, but we could only afford one lens, and the anesthesia sequence inside of the operating theater, I could only afford one tilt shift lens. So I used Vaseline, and just did a swirl around the other lens, and it cuts, like you don't feel the differences, but it is different. So that also meant that our lens choices, it's easier to get two cameras in if you use longer lenses, so that's a practical thing that was happening.

From a creative perspective, Kevin, and I sat and shotlisted the film together, and then Kevin, most nights before we were shooting, he would revise it. We had a month down, we shot all the non-prosthetics stuff, and we had a month off, and then we shot all the prosthetics, because the timing didn't work out for when the prosthetics were supposed to be finished. Through no fault of the prosthetics company, we switched companies, and it became a decision of we either push the entire movie, or we shoot out what we have already built and figure it out, and then we come back. So, we shot most of the first half of the movie, and then shot most of the second, just because of the nature of those scenes. What that gave us was an extra month to really sit and think about what those scenes looked and felt like, specifically the traps. I would say most days I came on set, we would have six to seven pages worth of coverage listed, and I'm like, "F--k, we have to move like lightning." I stayed awake a lot thinking about how to like the actors and actresses [look], because I'm like, "This is just not the most cosmetic [movie]."

But I think that ultimately was the right choice for what the film was, I would say. So ultimately, I would say Kevin knows that the movie needs close-ups, it was something that was a constant sort of decision, and then as we're actually photographing it is, it is actually about what is this scene, and what does the scene need? So, I do think you end up with a lot of you're here, like eyes to lips on John, in some of these, and there's some really intimate scenes. We've never seen Amanda and John have this level of intimacy before. Also, you're telling the story of a dying man who's experiencing extreme betrayal and grief, and so it felt like being in his eyes and feeling that was the heartbeat of the movie. So, there's two perspectives in this movie that we take — more than that, maybe — in general, we're shooting scenes from John's POV, or we're shooting them from the victim's point of view, because we want to place the audience into the trap itself. I think, because it's Saw, we have a lot of stylistic license and we take it. We are interested in doing visually engaging material.

At the end of the second act, there's a big techno crane shot where you see John and Amanda coming out, and then it whips around, and does this pushing speed ramp thing and lands on Cecilia. We're going to take those moments, but then we also know we're going to shoot a lot of these pieces in a very handheld kind of way. So yeah, all credit to Kevin, Kevin's very collaborative, and I very much felt I was able to put my touch on things, and it has my fingerprints all over it. But Kevin's a master of knowing what this movie needs and needed to be.

You have the first credit scene of the entire franchise, and it's got the return of Hoffman, a character who is both a fan favorite and divisive at the same time. I know that Kevin recently talked about it, and said that it was the most fan service-y thing you guys did. But what was it like for you learning that this character was going to return, especially since, like we were talking about earlier, you only had a certain amount of knowledge for the franchise, and I think fell short of seeing Hoffman properly, outside of when you watched Saw VI?

Nick Matthews: Yeah, I would say, because of my entry point into the franchise, I hadn't developed the same level of connection with him that a lot of other fans do. So, for me, what was exciting was getting to shoot in the original bathroom. We built it, it was a big conversation, too, because we wanted to do that final jib shot. We basically just did a jib on a dolly, push in, 360 [spin]. I think we had to use like a Scorpio head or something, but it's a complicated shot to do. That was actually the last night of our first block of shooting, and it was really scary and challenging, because the amount of material that, once again, we had to shoot in that amount of time. Obviously, you want to sell the opening, those are the original lights that flick on, those are the original lights from Saw 1. And they only did one take of that, Kevin was like, "I looked and looked and looked, but that's it."

It actually gets reused in the movies and stuff like that. We thought about shooting it ourselves, but then were like, "It's more fun if we use the original shot of the lights turning on, and then we cut into the scene and it cuts together." We did a variety of reveals with how he showed Hoffman, but I loved how Kevin ended up cutting it. I think it was just exciting to do, for me, that scene was exciting, but like in terms of bringing Hoffman back, and knowing that we were going to be able to at least like give fans some degree of connecting with Hoffman, or seeing him again. But mainly for me, I was focused on how do I make this feel like the first Saw movie and connect specifically with that scene. In addition to that, most of my energy was spent figuring out — I more pushed for, we didn't have the money to do a full trap for the end, but at the same time I'm like, "You can't end this movie and just have it be John saying, 'I'd like to play a game,' and a cut to black. You've got to show [a trap]."

Kevin was on board, and it was something we talked about, but I was very much like, "No we should end with a big trap shot and a big spiral, something that's got like a real button for the movie, because you should give fans that." I was trying to get us to have blood, like start seeing blood spilling out, just because I wanted to give that final blast of blood and violence. But I still I really love what ended up becoming it. We had three takes to get that shot, and we didn't get it till the third, and it was because it's very technical, because you're starting with a certain frame, and then you're coming into this thing, and you want the spin and the center mark to hit the trap, so we had to actually count. That was one of the only traps we hadn't tested, as well, because it was just a box where the knives start clicking. But what we hadn't tested was all the extraneous pieces around that, so it took a little bit of figuring, and I thought the producers might pull the plug and tell us, "Look, we're just ending the movie with, 'I'd like to play a game,'" but we got the f----ng shot. [Chuckles]

About Saw X

John Kramer (Tobin Bell) is back. The most chilling installment of the SAW franchise yet explores the untold chapter of Jigsaw’s most personal game. Set between the events of SAW I and II, a sick and desperate John travels to Mexico for a risky and experimental medical procedure in hopes of a miracle cure for his cancer – only to discover the entire operation is a scam to defraud the most vulnerable. Armed with a newfound purpose, John returns to his work, turning the tables on the con artists in his signature visceral way through a series of ingenious and terrifying traps.

Check out our other Saw X interviews below:

• Director Kevin Greutert & Production Designer Anthony Stabley
• Producers Mark Burg & Oren Koules
• Composer Charlie Clouser

Saw X is now in theaters.

Source: Screen Rant Plus