Spiral: From The Book Of Saw (2021)

By: Mike Ward on Friday, May 14

R Running Time: 93 mins

SHOULD I SEE IT?

YES

  • Fans of Saw will be hopeful that Spiral: From the Book of Saw will reboot one of the more controversial film franchises of the last 20 years and spin it into a whole new direction.

  • Benefits greatly, in theory, from Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson jumping into the fray.

  • Shifting to something more akin to a psychological thriller will make Saw seem a bit different and unique from its predecessors.

NO

  • Shifting Saw to a psychological thriller will make Spiral seem too different from its predecessors and disappoint those loyal fans who admire the film’s embracing of blood, gore, and depravity.

  • Wants to be several movies at the same time, and never commits to any of them.

  • Now after seeing it, I have zero idea what the point of this was? A terrible script with stilted dialogue and fewer death traps and a reveal telegraphed from miles away… This ain’t it, boys and girls. This ain’t it.


OUR REVIEW

Each October, from 2004-2010, horror movie fans would receive a new installment of Saw, the film franchise which mainstreamed, in large part, “torture porn,” and introduced the world to “Jigsaw.” Represented by a puppet, Jigsaw took delight in capturing people and placing them in “traps,” often inescapable or deadly tests or exercises to torture and murder younger men and women (the younger and more buxom the woman, the better of course.)

By the arrival of Saw 3D, the 7th installment in the series in 2010, these films had generated $1 billion in box office sales worldwide.

Saw 3D pushed the limits of what these already controversial and blood-soaked movies had depicted previously on screen. Notoriously, the film was so gory and so ugly, it received the “Scarlet Letter” of an NC-17 rating by the MPA. Numerous cuts had to be made before the film received the more palatable R-rating, which pleased theater owners and distributors. Still, featuring more deadly traps than ever (11), including one which previous directors passed on because of its unrelenting brutality, Saw 3D underperformed domestically, but banked more than $100 million worldwide.

Following a failed first attempt to resurrect the franchise, with 2017’s Jigsaw, many believed Saw to be dead and gone for good. Enter Chris Rock, who surprised folks in announcing that he would be starring in, and co-writing and co-producing the 9th film in the series, Spiral: From the Book of Saw.

But…like…why though? Rock also brings along Samuel L. Jackson to play his father and, for a moment, one may believe Spiral could actually be quite a bit of fun. Rock is an established comedic actor, with a long-storied career, and Jackson is always worth paying attention to. Their involvement lends some curiosity and newfound credibility to the franchise. Maybe there is something to work with here after all.

Nah. Just kidding. Spiral is a mess, close to a disaster. A poorly directed, badly shot, embarrassingly performed mess. Not only do we see another round of brutal traps designed to eradicate people into literal bits and pieces, we also endure awful dialogue, a twist many will see coming from a mile away, and one of the most rushed and haphazard endings in recent memory.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this whole endeavor is that the Saw franchise has now been repurposed into something like a knockoff of Seven, or movies of a similar nature. Rock plays flawed, hard-scrabble detective Zeke Banks, tasked with taking on William (Max Minghella), a rookie officer, and investigating the dismemberment death of a friend and colleague. In the film’s opening sequence, we see what befell the officer and the scattered remains discovered by Zeke and William call to mind the work of the “Jigsaw Killer” from years’ past.

Soon after we begin to realize that other than individuals caught in deadly traps, this Saw film is barely a Saw film at all. And can someone please tell me what the heck The Book of Saw actually is?!?

Like the cumbersome subtitle the film carries, there are useless moments which make for jarringly inconsistent tone and mood. We have grisly murders and intense death scenes. We also have Rock cutting jokes about Forrest Gump, bantering with his father, then lecturing William for several minutes (and I do mean several minutes…) on the struggles of being married and being a cop. Chris Rock has jokes folks. In a Saw movie.

Some semblances of meaning come from screenwriters Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger binding police immorality and consequences to some of what transpires here. However, they are also obsessed with turning this into a grisly “Criminal Minds” episode. And while I am not quite sure the idea is a sound one – Saw fans want inventive traps, death, and gore, while “Criminal Minds” and Seven fans want less viscera and dismemberment and more investigative suspense - you start to wonder just who Spiral is meant for.

Director Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV) returns to take the reins of this thing and he barely keeps it together. Rock is free-wheeling and all over the place in his performance. Because he is making jokes, then trying to be serious, then having to argue with his father or a badly miscast Marisol Nichols as a demanding police captain, Bousman never really manages to find any lane to stay in. The film also embodies a searing, overbaked visual aesthetic which grows weary on the eyes.

Unsettled and ugly, Spiral: From the Book of Saw never finds a voice with which to call its own and somehow has the temerity to leave an opportunity on the table for yet another Saw film. By this point, any one of the 70 or so death traps created for this cinematic junk pile might prove a more favorable option.

CAST & CREW

Starring: Chris Rock, Max Minghella, Marisol Nichols, Samuel L. Jackson, Zoie Palmer, Genelle Williams, Dan Petronijevic, Morgan David Jones

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Written by: Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger
Release Date: May 14, 2021
Lionsgate