Spiral : From the Book of Saw (2021) - Movie Review

What do you get when you drop Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson into the SAW universe alongside one of the original creators of the franchise?

A unbelievably shallow, unimaginative disappointment.

Let’s Discuss…

First off, let me say that I actually enjoy the original 9 SAW films and the universe therein. Are the movies in the upper echelon of horror?

No.

Are most of the movies even all that good?

Absolutely not, I’d say most are actually pretty terrible.

But are they fun and entertaining?

God Yes.

This is the wackiest gory film series this side of Troma, and the fact that they try to play things so serious with these asinine plots held together with chiclets makes them inadvertently hilarious. No one in the SAW franchise behaves like a normal human being. None of their decision making reflects reality.

But that’s why it works.

In it’s melodrama, the original films provide winks and nods to the audience, especially through the character of Jigsaw, played by horror legend Tobin Bell. Bell, much like other franchise icons Ala Robert England and Doug Bradley, obviously enjoy the work. I’d say the worst of the franchise limit Bell’s appearances, which is a shame because he is the crux of everything. You end up rooting for Jigsaw, because everyone else is such an asshole in these films.

But when the franchise killed Jigsaw off in SAW 3, which I still think is one of the biggest mistakes in movie history—the franchise’s tires really began to spin.

I think part of that was the producers trying to lowball Carey Elwes, which prevented Dr. Gordon from returning in either SAW 2 or SAW 3 in any major capacity—which derailed the original plans for the plot.

But a larger part of this was that without the Iconic performance of Bell, the films lost their soul. And yes, I know that he appears in flashbacks, and voice overs, and one of the thousands of tapes Jigsaw apparently recorded between seizures due to his brain cancer, but still—it just doesn’t feel right.

Many fans were hoping that Spiral would be a reboot to the SAW franchise that would right these wrongs and make an alternative continuity much like David Gordon Green and Danny McBride did (for better and for much, much worse with the 2nd and 3rd movies) with the Halloween series. However, this isn’t the case.

Spiral: From the Book of SAW is more akin to Halloween 3: Season of the Witch.

It’s an attempt to spin SAW off into an anthology series of films with Jigsaw copycats targeting specific demographics. This is not a sequel, nor is it a reboot. It’s just a film that takes place in a universe where the Jigsaw killer existed—however Bell’s image and voice are conspicuously absent leading this movie to feel much more like fan fiction.

Spiral: From the Book of SAW is a 2021 Horror/Thriller brought to us by writers Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger alongside Director Darren Lynn Bousman. Although, if I was any of these people watching the dailies—I would have had myself Alan Smitheed off of the credit.

Jesus Christ, how did 2 people write this?

The film focuses on Detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock), a good cop who was dealt a bad hand. Having turned in his former partner for murdering an innocent man—Zeke is branded a traitor by his fellow officers. To the point that in one instance, he almost died from a gunshot sustained due to his fellow cops abandoning him in an active shooter situation. Ostracized, he’s forced to take on a new partner, Det. Schenk and together they are targeted by a new Jigsaw killer. However, unlike previous copycats—this one appears to be much closer to the original. Cryptic videos, a pig mask, and puppets made of flesh lead police to horrific crime scenes featuring insanely complex deathtraps targeting the corrupt officers of the police department. Will Zeke be able to uncover the killer’s master plan before it’s too late, or will the Jigsaw killer complete its mission in cleansing the P.D. Find out in Spiral: From the Book of Saw.

Let’s start with some positives:

Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson are incredible. These two need to be in more movies together as father and son. Their relationship felt real and it’s a shame it was spoiled in this dumpster fire of a film.

Marisol Nichols, mainly known for her work on Riverdale and 24, is outstanding in her role as the Cpt. Garza and is electric. You can’t take your eyes off her when she’s on screen. I hope she gets more opportunities to show her talents in better films soon.

The film is shot beautifully. Director of Photography Jordan Oram did a wonderful job mirroring previous films, but without the overwhelming use of filters the franchise was infamous for. He somehow found a perfect balance that the film still has the trademark grittiness, but still looks fantastic in 4k UHD.

The Music and soundtrack is top notch. The soundtrack features original music by 21 Savage, and the score features a nice remix of the franchise theme.

Now that those items are out of the way…

…what a fucking dumpster fire.

It’s really apparent to me at this point that Darren Lynn Bousman is not a good director. Outside of SAW 2, which is one of my favorite of the franchise, he hasn’t given the public a decent, enjoyable film and even SAW 2 was a rip-off of the popularity of the much better film CUBE. His follow-up efforts including Saw 3, Saw VI, Repo the Genetic Opera, and the Devil’s Carnival were not good. All were a mess of poor execution and wasted potential, which led to one of the worst films I’ve ever watched, Abattoir. Abattoir upsets me most, because it’s an incredible premise that was executed so poorly and the acting and directing were so below average that it’s pretty much unwatchable.

This film mirrors those other projects. It’s almost an assembly line film that just feels like they did an initial story map and then just said, fuck-it, let’s bust this shit out and clock out for the day. There is no real plot to speak of other than the initial set-up. Rock’s character dumps exposition about his backstory, but you don’t see him interact with anyone longer than a few seconds, and the ones he does are such caricatures of corruption that there’s no grey area to push you to root for or against him. It’s obvious that everyone around him is a douchebag, but that doesn’t make him a good character, no matter how good of a performance he gives.

The initial premise is cool, but Hellraiser: Inferno did it better and at a much lower budget.

Shoutout to my boy Craig Schaffer, the most underrated horror leading man in history. You’ll always be my Boon, bud.

Police corruption was a hot topic in 2021 (and still is of course), but this feels so forced. I have had many run ins with police, especially in my drug addicted and violence laden teen years, and I have to say that even though I have had experiences with horrible human beings sporting a badge, the majority of the ones I’ve interacted with were good people. In this Police Department, every-single-one is either a turd sandwich or a giant douche, there’s no in between.

Which is why the character of Detective William Schenk’s motivation and character ark are so blatantly obvious after the initial 30 minutes of the film. Part of that is the fact that Max Minghella isn’t a good actor and I am dumbfounded as to why this guy keeps getting work. His performances have been the low-point of many films including: Horns, Babylon, and The Darkest Hour. He has one setting and one facial expression. It’s as if Chat GPT were an actor.

Oh and the digital effects in this movie, especially the videos left by Jigsaw, look awful. The pig mask videos presented by the killer look like they were done by the Angry Videogame Nerd. The green screen is terrible and the Adobe Premier Shakeycam / after effects tracking bars look really cheap in UHD.

Alright kids, it’s that time again:

S

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The writing in this film is milquetoast and bland that they actually make the over the top kills feel banal.

I knew that Detective Schenk was the killer from about the half hour mark. I turned to my wife and said, they guy did it because Zeke’s partner killed his dad all those years ago.

Much to my disappointment, I was a 100% right.

The filmmakers make an extremely lazy and lame attempt at turning Samuel L. Jackson into a red herring, but he is only in the film for about 35 seconds prior to the climax and doesn’t really do anything suspicious outside of driving his sick ass Dodge Challenger to an industrial area. It felt like they finished the movie and realized, “Oh shit, we forgot to put in any twists or turns, let’s do a single pick-up shot of Sam driving to a factory that doesn’t even look like the factory we were trying to imply he was going to.

Oh and they make a really poor attempt to “kill-off” Schenk, but his “death” has no set-up or lead-in to give the viewer any actual weight to his death and with Minghella’s acting being so tired and lame—you don’t care. My wife turned to me and asked, “Who go killed?” She couldn’t remember who was supposed to have died, because there’s no lead-in. You don’t see a faux trap or anything to trick the viewer. Nope, you just get a stupid montage of his lame voice acting and a photo of his baby as Chris Rock tries to remind you that you are supposed to care about this vanilla, boring ass character that had no weight to the film.

Also, the killer’s motivation of cleaning up the police department is admirable, but he is performing his kills against the tenants of Jigsaw. All of the traps in this film are in fact unescapable and done as a form of vengeance, not justice. While John Kramer was insane, he believed that everyone deserved a second chance. This is why he disciplined Shawnee Smith’s Amanda in SAW 3 and gave her another test of conviction.

Also, the convoluted story of him growing up and planning his vengeance, going to school for criminal justice, going to the police academy, getting promoted to detective, and somehow getting assigned to the exact department he wanted to reap vengeance upon is so implausible and convoluted that it just can’t be made up for with suspension of disbelief.

It’s films like this that make me lose hope in writing as an art form.

I may not be a stellar writer, but I’ve pitched scripts far better than this trash—and been laughed out of the building.

Don’t watch this movie. It’s really not worth it.

If you do want to punish yourself though, it’s streaming exclusively on HBO MAX.