Director Kevin Greutert returns to the franchise that birthed his feature-length career with Saw X, a precise and brutal high watermark that knows exactly what its audience wants. Top-tier Tobin Bell, top-tier Shawnee Smith, top-tier traps: it’s the best Saw in years and perhaps since the original. Minor spoilers ahead…

More Saw and Dead Silence than The Conjuring and Insidious, James Wan’s Malignant takes a gruesome detour from mass appeal horror back into the land of subversive terror. A Frankenstein’s amalgam of giallo, camp, and body horror, Wan’s latest takes pages from Argento, Cronenberg, and even De Palma to deliver the wildest of gory rides. Nothing will really prepare you for the nasty surprises Malignant has in store for you. Minor spoilers ahead…

Leaving behind a compoundingly absurd history of twists and an increasingly Byzantine web of continuity, Spiral: From the Book of Saw reboots the bloody franchise by splitting the difference between its gruesome notoriety and a fresh detective story. Spiral never comes close to the heights of its 2004 namesake, but it’s engaging enough to get to its kills, and it doesn’t overstay its welcome.