Some time ago, the Jigsaw doll boarded a plane and traveled to the land of the Aztecs in the fall, in time to celebrate the Day of the Dead. However, their task was not to make offerings or ask for a skull, but to film the expected tenth of Seen. For the first time in the nearly two decades of its existence, the popular horror franchise would have a film with a story set in a geographically defined space. In this case, it was the Valley of Mexico where the filming took place Seen between October 2022 and February 2023, mainly at two locations.
As the main location, the production team was housed in the previously unoccupied building a factory in the Atlampa district, lies almost in the division of the municipalities of Cuauhtémoc and Azcapotzalco in Mexico City. All the deadly traps found in have been set up Saw Xincluding the one with the chair with the eye sucker, although his moment in the film is different than the rest.
The plot suggests that John Kramer (Tobin Bell) attempts to teach a cruel lesson to a group of CDMX fraudsters who lied to him about an experimental treatment that would supposedly cure his cancer. With the help of his henchwoman Amanda Young (Shawnee Smith), Kramer kidnaps the criminals and takes them to an – in fiction – abandoned chemical factory, where they pretend to perform brain surgery on him and which, for precisely this reason, becomes the crime scene of his revenge.
You might also be interested in: Saw X: A thrilling casting and filming experience for Mexican talent.
The second of these locations, which took up a large part of the filming Saw X Was a farm ten minutes from the municipality of Chiconcuac in the state of Mexico. In the film, this room purports to be a peaceful residence that (supposedly) houses the patients of the fraudulent medical team that defrauds John Kramer. Several scenes show him touring the property, living with its residents, and interacting with the fake Dr. Cecilia Pederson (Synnøve Macody Lund) chats. During one of these conversations, the protagonist looks towards the horizon and observes the Cerro del Chiquihuite in the distance.
On the other hand, keeping the production at CDMX allowed the use of images from some historical and representative locations. To the final cut of Saw XThere were shots of the Revolutionary Monument and the Independence Angel that John Kramer watches from the window of a taxi in the film. In the same sequence, the audience will notice that there is an allusion to the Mexican rain god and that it was director Kevin Greutert’s intention to include in his film the gigantic monolith of Tláloc, located outside the National Museum of Anthropology on the Paseo de la Reforma. However, he was apparently ultimately unable to film the film due to lack of permits.
What other places in the Valley of Mexico did you recognize in the film? For example, have you noticed that the “airport” where Jigsaw arrives is actually a shopping center? Perisur, to be precise.
