Spi­ral

Long-time fans of James Wan and Leigh Whannell’s tricksy tor­ture fran­chise Saw were a lit­tle sur­prised in 2019, when, seem­ing­ly out of nowhere, came the announce­ment that renowned fun­ny­man Chris Rock was to devel­op a new instal­ment into the canon. It was two years after the under­whelm­ing per­for­mance of the Spierig Broth­ers’ Jig­saw, and the series’ future looked uncer­tain, but there’s noth­ing the Saw films like more than a left-field plot twist.

Rein­stat­ing direc­tor Dar­ren Lynn Bous­man – who direct­ed the sec­ond, third and fourth instal­ments of the orig­i­nal Saw series – and bring­ing some upgrad­ed star pow­er in the form of Samuel L Jack­son and Max Minghel­la as well as Rock him­self in the lead role, Spi­ral: From the Book of Saw was quick­ly estab­lished to be a reboot rather than a direct sequel, exist­ing in the same world as the Saw fran­chise but not fea­tur­ing any actors from pre­vi­ous films, includ­ing Tobin Bell, who had pre­vi­ous­ly appeared in every instal­ment as the nefar­i­ous mas­ter­mind John Kramer, aka Jigsaw.

Keen to strike out on its own, the film makes some notice­able changes ear­ly on. Gone is Bil­ly the Pup­pet, emblem of the fran­chise, and where the unset­tling­ly flat voice of Kramer used to pro­vide instruc­tions via video tape to his vic­tims, now there’s a fig­ure in a pig mask who sounds like Ker­mit the Frog using a voice mod­u­la­tor. While change is nec­es­sary to breathe new life into an estab­lished set of IP, too much can be a bad thing, and threat­ens to remove the ele­ments which view­ers enjoyed (though, is that real­ly the right word here?) in the first place.

Where the pre­vi­ous eight films plumbed the depths of deprav­i­ty to dis­patch humans in the most elab­o­rate and grue­some ways pos­si­ble, thin­ly jus­ti­fied by an exten­sive amount of Saw lore, Spi­ral oper­ates more in the vein of David Fincher’s Se7en or – less gen­er­ous­ly – an extend­ed episode of CSI, where most of the focus is on the detec­tives try­ing to track down the killer rather than the griz­zly mur­ders them­selves. This might be a pos­i­tive for the more squea­mish view­er, but hard­ened gore fiends might be a lit­tle under­whelmed, even if the few traps that do crop up are every bit as unpleas­ant as any­thing dreamt up by their predecessors.

Rock is a charis­mat­ic choice for the role of Detec­tive Zeke Banks, who has become some­thing of a black sheep in his depart­ment since he report­ed his crooked part­ner to inter­nal affairs. He’s part­nered with rook­ie William Schenk (Max Minghel­la) to hunt down a psy­chopath who is stalk­ing Banks’ col­leagues and taunt­ing the detec­tive with macabre gifts – all of which reminds him of a cer­tain celebri­ty ser­i­al killer, long thought to be dead and buried. Fac­tor in Jack­son as Zeke’s leg­endary cop father, and the stage is set for all man­ner of fun­ny games, but in the biggest twist of all, Spi­ral just doesn’t lean into the source mate­r­i­al enough for a sat­is­fy­ing pay-off.

The whole pro­duc­tion feels more expen­sive, from the tal­ent in front of the cam­era to the sets and cam­er­a­work, which do away with the trade­mark blur effects and motion-sick­ness-induc­ing zooms (although, cru­cial­ly, the film does at least retain the Saw theme, known as ​‘Hel­lo Zepp’). It’s Saw tak­en more seri­ous­ly than before, even if Rock’s occa­sion­al out­bursts threat­en to derail that by evok­ing the spir­it of Mar­ty the Zebra from Madagascar.

This might be part of the prob­lem: the hokey­ness of the Saw films was always part of their (lim­it­ed) charm. By mak­ing every­thing that bit more pol­ished, Spi­ral los­es part of the essence that gave the orig­i­nals films their appeal. It’s Saw in name but not in spir­it – even the grand reveal is under­mined by the fact that even a fran­chise new­com­er could see it com­ing from space.

Mean­while, the film’s ​‘not all cops’ through­line is unfor­tu­nate­ly timed giv­en the increas­ing­ly vocal calls to defund the police across the US and the UK, mean­ing that a film about cor­rupt offi­cers being saved from a moral­is­ing ser­i­al killer doesn’t real­ly give audi­ences any­one to root for. In fact, it’s nev­er entire­ly clear who Spi­ral has been made for – it’s nei­ther gory enough to sat­is­fy the hard­core Saw set, nor ambi­tious enough to enter­tain as a pro­ce­dur­al thriller.

There are a few inter­est­ing set-pieces, and the cast have a good time chew­ing up the scenery, but by mov­ing too far away from what made Saw mem­o­rable in the first place, this reboot feels more like a foot­note than the next chapter.