Spiral: From the Book of Saw
One of the fundamental issues at the heart of “Spiral” when it begins is, it’s hard to see Chris Rock in a dramatic film where he’s not really allowed to be funny. I love Rock as a performer, but when the action begins in this new story set in the world of “Saw,” his Detective Zeke Banks is rigid and intense, and those are two things you don’t really expect out of Rock. Eventually, the film settles in, and Rock does as well, but by that point, there are other issues that arise that make this one of the lesser entries in this franchise.
I own the first six “Saw” movies- five of them as part of a set, and then the sixth one. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to say that. While I generally like the series for what it does, and what it’s built on, it doesn’t have the rewatchability as, say, “Friday the 13th” does. That’s not to say it’s better, but for all the generic slasher elements in play with “Friday the 13th,” at least those films are fun. The “Saw” films are oppressive in how grimy and unpleasant they look and feel. Returning to the universe for the first time since he directed three of the best entries in the series, director Darren Lynn Bousman does a good job of not making the film feel oppressive in its visual style, and understanding that why the torture kills in these films succeed- they are brutal, and they require suspense rather than jangly camera tricks. The reason “Spiral” doesn’t succeed like his triumvirate of “Saw II-IV” do is because the screenplay by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger doesn’t feel genuine in the obvious outrage it wants to project.
When the film begins, Banks is detested by the other cops in his precinct; the reason is because he ratted out a fellow cop, who killed a witness in cold blood. Now, he isn’t really given much in the way of quality cases. He’s about to get one by accident, however, when a homeless person (supposedly) is killed on the subway tracks by a train. It’s not a homeless person, however, but Banks’s former partner, whom we’ve seen- in one of the opening scenes- put into a trap a la Jigsaw. As the police deaths begin to add up, it’s clear someone is copying Jigsaw, and targeting corrupt cops in Banks’s precinct. Suspects abound, and even Banks’s father, the former police chief of the precinct (played by Samuel L. Jackson), has some ideas; so does Banks’s new partner, a family man (Max Minghella) whom admired Zeke’s father.
There are a number of times where, I’ll admit, I thought I had “Spiral” figured out, as there are red herrings thrown out for the audience multiple times in the film. When it does get to the end, I was a bit underwhelmed by the reveal, but there are few this series could offer that had quite the impact as John Kramer getting up from that floor at the end of the first “Saw,” or Shawnee Smith’s Amanda being revealed as an accomplice after she was a victim. Rather than build an elaborate mythology around just John Kramer, the series would have been best served had it not had every killer one degree of separation from Kramer himself. That’s something “Spiral” actually does quite well, and with an interest of putting their own spin on the morality Kramer served in his traps. Unfortunately, the film ends up being an empty-headed thriller that cannot really land its punches because, by the end, we don’t know if a moral center exists in the film. If it had, “Spiral” might have been the fresh start this series needed.
