Kevin Greutert

Kevin Greutert (birthname: Kevin Henry Greutert) is best known as a regular director of the long-running Saw torture-horror series. Greutert began his film career as a film editor, was hired to edit the original Saw (2004), and has worked with the franchise in one creative capacity or another, mainly as director, ever since.

Greutert was editor of the successive sequels, Saw II (2005), Saw III (2006), Saw IV (2007), and Saw V (2008), before he took over as director of his debut, Saw VI (2009), quickly followed by directing the series’ seventh entry, Saw 3D (2010), which had been intended to be the series finale. However, a standalone Saw movie, Jigsaw (2017), was produced, with Greutert returning to his original position as editor. Greteurt continued his collaboration with the Saw series as executive producer only of the standalone, Spiral (2021), starring Chris Rock.

With the tenth entry in the series, Saw X (2023), starring Tobin Bell, Steven Brand, and Synnøve Macody Lund, Kevin Greutert returned, but in the new, combined roles as director and editor. Between his many Saw movies, Greutert was director and editor of a string of supernatural horror genre movies, including Lionsgate/Blumhouse’s Jessabelle (2014), starring Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, David Andrews, and Joelle Carter; Visions (2015), another Blumhouse production—this time with Universal Pictures—starring Isla Fisher, Anson Mount, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Parsons, Joanna Cassidy, and Eva Longoria; and the little-seen Jackals (2017), which starred Deborah Kara Unger, Johnathon Schaech, Stephen Dorff, and Ben Sullivan.

Unusual among directors, Greutert continued to work as an editor only for other movies, including director-writer Iris K. Shim’s supernatural horror film, Umma (2022), starring Sandra Oh, Fivel Stewart, Dermot Mulroney, produced by Sam Raimi; and Seth Rogen-produced and Samuel Bodin-directed horror movie for Lionsgate, Cobweb (2023), grossing $4.6 million. Greutert also served as a creative consultant to writer-director Zach Cregger on his acclaimed and smash $45-million-grossing hit, Barbarian (2022).