Spiral (2021)
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman; co-written by Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger with contributions by Chris Rock; starring Chris Rock, Max Minghella and Marisol Nichols.
2/5
Spiral arrives as the ninth entry to the Saw franchise, that early pioneer of the torture-porn sub-genre, with the last release being the less-than-lack-luster Jigsaw back in 2017. What seems to separate this latest entry from the last (and the one before that, and before that) is that it’s not yet another attempt to simply prolong the inevitable death of the main through-line with Tobin Bell’s serial killer Jigsaw at the heart of things.
This time around, we’ve a new killer. This sadist comes with a hilariously unmenacing new voice changer, along with a new setting, a new puppet and a number of new, grisly “games” that many fans will probably be fairly excited to see return to the big screen.
Unfortunately for those fans, though, Spiral, as much as it strives to distinguish itself from the rest of the series as a self-described chapter “from the book of Saw,” doesn’t put in quite enough legwork to break new ground. Though it’s certainly a new set of characters and dilemmas, the relationship with those films that came before is never really justified and Spiral’s fear of straying too far from the dated sensibilities of its distant ancestor (which debuted way back in 2004), in the name of loyalty, prevents it from really charting a new, distinct course for the franchise.
Chris Rock, also credited as executive producer and as a contributor to the script, stars as one Detective Zeke Banks. He’s a tough, no nonsense cop, who doesn’t play by the rules, as the film feels the need to remind us over and over (actually this apparent distrust of the audience’s memory of even the biggest of details is a key feature of the film), with some shaky history relating to the rest of the corrupt department he belongs to.
When we meet Zeke, he’s raiding a drugs operation with a small gang of machine-gun wielding baddies and it soon becomes apparent that he’s deep undercover. As becomes immediately apparent, though, Zeke’s latest antics have demonstrated to his immediate superior, Captain Angie Garza (Marisol Nichols), that he’s in just a little too deep for her liking and Zeke is immediately reassigned and saddled with the straight-shooting rookie, William Schenk (Max Minghella).
Fortunately for the hardened detective, but probably quite unfortunate for the rest of the department, things won’t be as dull as he first thought as a series of packages of increasingly grotesque contents indicates a Jigsaw copycat killer has surfaced in the local area and is bumping off cops.
Zeke is a bit of an enigma, not in the sense that he’s a compellingly mysterious guy with a lot of undisclosed baggage – it is disclosed, over and over and over again – but in the sense that he’s simultaneously a great cop who holds other cops to account and also a bad boy who doesn’t play by the rules and, in all fairness, this is one of the only areas where I’m willing to lend the filmmakers the benefit of the doubt on their motives.
It’s still not exactly clear why things play out this way as the overall messaging of the film feels a little muddled (I’m being generous when I say this), but it does actually seem at times that a point is being made that Zeke is the outlier because he’s the only one actually doing his job properly.
Inevitably, Rock plays the detective with two volumes: brooding silence, which involves a half-baked Clint Eastwood impressive, squinting and jaw clenching included, and max volume-shouting. At times he’s a little funny, but it seems as though Rock is constantly fighting his own impulses to keep any good humour locked deep within – probably the most disappointing part of the film.
When you have Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson – who plays Zeke’s father, ex-police chief Marcus Banks – you’d expect some level of fun and, though there are moments the former is allowed to riff a little, it’s almost always surface. The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m asking perhaps one of the most grisly modern franchises to inject a little bit of levity, but really I think something as farfetched as modern Saw can’t afford to take itself so seriously.
This all being said, it’s definitely less relentlessly torturous (though it is still very graphic) than previous films have been and does attempt to take things at least somewhat back to basics in the plot department, with what it turns out is a rather simple little mystery that doesn’t completely rely on prior knowledge of earlier entries to the franchise.
It’s by no means clever, telegraphing its huge twist by deciding not to depict a particular killing in full as it has always jumped at the chance to do, but it’s certainly an improvement over the constant retelling of the same stores common to the other entries in the series.
The “games” – a quirky name for some quirky little moments of self-mutilation – are still hamfisted morality tales about wrongdoing. An example being the opening scene, which culminates in one unfortunate cop having his tongue pinned between two metal bars whilst being suspended in front of a railroad for “today, it is [he] who will be railroaded.” Get it? He’s a corrupt cop who used his wagging TONGUE to RAILROAD witnesses into lying for him. Yeah.
They’re also all still incredibly graphic – but here, far more so than in any of the others, I found that the suggestion of some of the traps far gnarlier to wrap my head around than actually seeing them play out. At one point, we see the point at which one officer wakes up in one of the copycat’s brutal contraptions and is informed of what he must do, and when we cut away before anything could be depicted, I was hoping we wouldn’t cut back – not because I didn’t want to see it play out, but because I honestly found what I was imagining (aided by the remaining cops’ discovery of the game’s aftermath) far grislier and cringe inducing than what the whole thing play out slowly even after we knew exactly what the outcome was.
Earlier on, I mentioned the whole film’s relationship to the rest of the franchise feeling unjustified and this goes as deep as the killer’s motives. I’m not going to spoil anything for those of you who do care, but if you do go to see it – I’d be really curious to see if you can figure out why the new guy’s copying the Jigsaw killer, why they decide to torture all of the victims rather than just kill them.
When it comes time to wrap things up, the film doesn’t even give us any explanation, either. It tells us how the twist occurred, but there’s little lip service given to why things played out the way they did, why the killer went about doing things the way he did. Instead, it just sort of ends. I’m not complaining, the whole thing was dull as hell to me, but it was just such an off-beat note to go out on for something supposedly intended to kickstart a whole new chapter for a franchise.
Watched on 19th May 2021