Spiral: From the Book of Saw

The Doctor’s Diagnosis: C

             I honestly thought that this movie was a joke the first time that I read about it. I never thought that I would seriously write the phrase “Saw IX starring Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson,” but then I read about it in a couple of other places and realized that, somehow, this was actually a real thing that was happening. Then I started to feel a glimmer of hope. While I don’t love the Saw series, it was desperately in need of a fresh take. While I respect the series’ almost dogmatic adherence to continuity (unlike Halloween or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which treat their continuity as a choose-your-own-adventure story), things had simply become too complicated. Spiral promised a soft reboot that remained in the same world as the other films, but branched out and opened the series to new possibilities. In retrospect, I call bullshit because, while Spiral isn’t as entrenched in continuity as the previous entries, this is still an extremely routine Saw film and not a particularly good one either.  

             Chris Rock plays a police detective that has been shunned by his co-workers because he had previously exposed corruption on the force (this also caused his father and police chief, played by Jackson, to lose his job). Corrupt cops suddenly start being killed in Jigsaw-inspired traps and Rock takes the lead on tracking down the Jigsaw copycat. That’s about it in terms of plot.

             The cop elements are written as if they are meant as a parody of cop movies from the 80s-early 90s, except nobody is in on the joke. Rock is a loner with a violent past and he doesn’t play by the rules, but now he has to be paired with a rookie partner. Ever heard that shit before? Oh, and he’s constantly being yelled at by the hard-ass police chief (oddly played by a hot woman in her 30s, whose ascension to chief must have been meteoric) about how he needs to start playing by the rules. Despite the pure comedy of these cliches, the film plays it completely straight, which makes me think that this is more a case of shitty screenwriting that it is a homage to the Lethal Weapon series (which Rock was ironically in). This shit was already parodied in Last Action Hero like 25 years ago, yet this film tries to present it as fresh as if we haven’t seen Riggs and Murtaugh do this shit for four movies and that was decades ago. And now I feel old.

             One might think that Rock and Jackson would play off of each other well and provide some comedic value. One might be wrong. Both characters play things very straight, except for (literally) a couple of laughs from Rock, and the script is bland enough to strip away any potential chemistry between the two. Jackson’s role is so generic that I wonder why they bothered to pay such a big-name actor for the role, and Rock seems to be trying to win an award for most cliched detective role with lines like “I can’t trust anyone!” It’s honestly baffling why these guys are involved in this film (though Rock apparently had the idea for the script), as any no-name actors could have done this. It would be like if Matt Damon randomly showed up in the next Friday the 13^th movie as victim #4.

             Generic writing aside, this movie promised to move the series in new directions. Bull-fucking-shit. This is an incredibly routine take on the Saw formula that still suffers from the problem that has plagued this series since Saw III: Jigsaw is dead and, since he isn’t supernatural like Freddy or Jason, that means we need somebody else to carry his mantle. In this film’s defense, they finally abandoned the routine of just revealing previously unknown Jigsaw apprentices, which is the plot device that sustained this series from the 4^th entry until now. Instead, though, Spiral introduces a new villain that couldn’t possibly be less interesting. Not only does he lack the presence and philosophical musings of Jigsaw, he’s incredibly obvious. I don’t give a fuck if saying “he” is a clue; the identity of the killer is painfully obvious by the halfway point. If you haven’t figured it out by this point, the movie will fully assume that you’re a moron by having one “victim” whose death isn’t shown on camera. Hint, motherfuckers: that means that victim is the killer. As contrived as the Saw movies became over the years, they usually still had a solid twist at the end. No so here, as this shit can be seen coming from a mile away and it’s kind of sad to see the series reach this point.

             As the Saw series went on, it became more and more about seeing the escalating gore and insanity of the traps. Even in this regard, Spiral takes a step back. The traps aren’t particularly interesting or gory, particularly compared to the traps in prior sequels (my favorite trap is in my still-favorite sequel, Saw III, when the guy is drowned in ground-up pig carcasses). It’s all just kind of meh and seems scaled-back, which would be fine if the script was stronger but it is just one more reason to lose interest in such a mundane chapter. The best trap involves a giant tube that unleashes hot wax on a victim’s face, but the fact that this happened in the evidence room of a police station raises a few questions. I have a couple of cop friends and I need to ask them how hard it would be to construct a giant death trap, requiring a pipe leading to an outside source, in the basement of police headquarters and then use said trap to kill the chief of police in the middle of the day without any other cops noticing. I mean, I’m not a cop, but I would think that would raise a few red flags.

             Sprial isn’t an awful movie, but its one of the worst in the series and that’s kind of shocking considering the talent involved. The script is a bland parade of cliches that takes itself way too seriously, the traps are disappointing and the final twist is easily the worst in the history of the franchise. Although I’m sure I’ll be reviewing Saw X or Spiral II or Jigsaw II or Hacksaw: From the Book of Spiral, Inspired by the Album of Saw in a couple of years, this series just has nothing left to give at this point. Let it go.

Image By: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_(2021_film)#/media/File:Spiral_Official_Poster.jpg