Spiral: From the Book of Saw
- Directed by
- Darren Lynn Bousman
- Written by
- Pete Goldfinger, Josh Stolberg
- Produced by
- Mark Burg, Oren Koules, Chris Rock, James Wan, Daniel J. Heffner
Why it’s HorroRated
Spiral is an interesting attempt to spin the Saw formula into a full-blown police procedural, and that ambition mostly pays off in fits and starts rather than as a cohesive whole. Chris Rock brings genuine dramatic weight to Zeke Banks, an ostracized cop whose backstory as the department's outcast gives the film real thematic potential around institutional corruption that it never quite commits to fully exploring. Samuel L. Jackson's presence as Zeke's father adds gravity even though the screenplay leans on tired father-son conflict clichés instead of digging into the more interesting tensions available. The traps themselves are inventive and the gore delivers for series fans, but the pacing feels hastily assembled and several plot twists land better than the connective tissue holding them together deserves. A genre appropriation experiment that's more interesting than most late-franchise Saw entries even when it doesn't fully succeed.
Synopsis
Detective Zeke Banks has spent twelve years as a department pariah after turning in his corrupt former partner, and he's paired with a rookie just as a Jigsaw copycat begins systematically targeting crooked cops across the city. The killer's traps echo John Kramer's original methods almost exactly, cryptic videos, a pig mask, elaborate death devices, but the motivation shifts from redemption to outright vengeance against police corruption. Darren Lynn Bousman directs Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson in a spinoff that positions itself as a police thriller wearing Saw's aesthetic, deliberately distancing itself from previous franchise continuity.
