Film Review: Spiral
Spiral: From the Book of Saw gives Jigsaw a clean slate
Leaving behind a compoundingly absurd history of twists and an increasingly labyrinthine web of continuity, Spiral: From the Book of Saw reboots the bloody franchise by splitting the difference between its gruesome notoriety and a new 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. Minor spoilers ahead…
In 2004, a little-known filmmaker by the name of James Wan directed a low-budget horror film titled Saw. Working off his film school buddy Leigh Whannell’s acting talents and fiendishly clever screenplay, Wan delivered a soon-to-be genre classic that would send controversy buzzing and watchdogs groups into a frenzy. And while the moniker “torture porn” wouldn’t be coined until a year later with the release of Eli Roth’s Hostel, the label would soon retroactively - and sometimes quite unfairly - apply to Saw and all its sequels. Ironically enough, the first Saw is much tamer than our collective memory leads us to remember, exaggerating its gruesome reputation through an ingenious twist and its much gnarlier sequels. With Spiral: From the Book of Saw, helmed by early-franchise steward Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw II, III, and IV), the series attempts to provide itself with a clean slate, freeing itself from eight films worth of convoluted continuity by splitting the difference between the series’ more gruesome bloodletting and the original film’s character-driven whodunit.
Jigsaw (Tobin Bell, only glimpsed through newspaper clippings) is long dead. The new film centers around detective Ezekiel “Zeke” Banks as he takes charge investigating a new string of killings with the same modus operandi as the infamous deathtrap architect John Kramer, this time targeting crooked cops. Saddled with a bright-eyed partner he doesn’t want (Max Minghella) and a massive chip on his shoulder thanks to his aging police chief father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson), Banks peels back the layers of a grisly mystery, only to find himself at the center of the killer’s twisted game.
“Spiral wisely chooses to ditch its thick tome of continuity, telling a new story that only requires a passing knowledge of Jigsaw and his crimes.”
The original Saw’s now-iconic ending defined the entire franchise, but it was also the albatross around the series’ bloody neck. With sequels that felt obligated to one-up their esteemed predecessor’s calculated swerve, the Saw films would soon find themselves layering on absurd twist after absurd twist, only deepening their Byzantine mythology into an indecipherable mess. Spiral: From the Book of Saw wisely chooses to ditch its thick tome of continuity, telling a new story that only requires a passing knowledge of Jigsaw and his crimes. Bousman, along with scribes Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, also adds the obvious improvement over Saw’s later sequels by abandoning its tired formula of watching unlikeable fodder get butchered in gruesomely fun - but repetitive - ways. Gathering some star power and an actually appealing lead, Spiral takes much of its action aboveground with an engaging Chris Rock performance. And watching Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson do their thing is infinitely more palatable than slogging through the later entries’ dour and miserable victims.
But you don’t really go see a Saw movie for its narrative prowess or its performances, you go see a Saw movie for its gory deathtraps, and on that front, Spiral delivers in spades. Where later installments deployed CG-assisted contraptions and splatter, Spiral tones down their complexities to deliver mostly practical - and therefore much scarier - traps. Between gross-out vices, bubbling liquids, and appendage-ripping machinery, the film’s violence is much more wince-inducing than laughable. Gore-fiends will have an absolute blast with Spiral.
In the end, however, Spiral still can’t hold a candle to 2004’s Saw. While it attempts to tell a compelling detective story, the film’s mystery - even if it is a refreshing change of pace from the dim and dingy norm - feels tired and is much less clever than it thinks it is: Eagle-eyed viewers familiar with genre tropes will see the big reveal coming miles away. Spiral still can’t shake the franchise’s worst tendencies, and its twist is similar in form to the series’ most eye-rolling moments, constructed through convenient omission and concealment rather than true inventiveness. Thankfully, this reboot also knows its strengths and weaknesses by not overstaying its welcome, giving us pretty much exactly what we want in 93 brisk minutes. In spite of Spiral’s flaws, it’s still a joy to see the return of Jigsaw’s brutal mind games and signature sadism. With the franchise refreshed with the blood of new victims, it looks like The Book of Saw might still have a few more chapters in store for us.
