Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
ACAB For Cutie
Despite its reputation, and the legions of blood-soaked copycats that tried to glom onto its box office dominance, the Saw franchise is not “torture porn”. The first movie centered on a new breed of serial killer whose gimmick was locking his victims into elaborate traps and giving them the choice between certain death and ungodly disfigurement—ostensibly as penance for some major character flaw or outright crime.
The so-called Jigsaw Killer (Tobin Bell) did monstrous things to monstrous people, and sometimes to people whose sins were only against themselves. The result was a cinematic catharsis of “cool” marked by elaborate death scenes and an invitation to examine ourselves: Who among us would have the guts to carve out an eyeball to reach a key that had been surgically implanted behind it? More chillingly, would you or I pass Jigsaw’s moral purity test?
Spiral, the series’ eighth sequel, is, in fact, torture porn. It not only hurts to watch; it has excised all of the emotional stimuli out of what I’ll call the “root act”, leaving a movie whose sole purpose is to excite the basest needs of its audience.
Chris Rock stars as Zeke Banks, a police detective surrounded by corrupt cops (there appears to be literally no one else in the precinct, city, state, country, universe, etc. who might be considered “above board”). When a former partner is killed in a Jigsaw-style trap, Banks muscles his way to the head of the investigation. He’s assigned a rookie tag-along (Will Schenk , played by Max Minghella) whom he proceeds to berate and regale with several stand-up routines about the suckiness of life in general and of marriage in particular.
Not the best start to a working relationship.
Other murders happen, all involving crooked cops, and all accompanied by eerie gift-wrapped clues/mementos. We’re treated to frequent flashback fragments that are meant to, in classic Saw fashion, build upon our knowledge of Zeke’s past in order to bring us closer to understanding the killer’s motives and identity. Sadly, every aspect of Spiral is handled so clumsily that instead of gaining insight from these clues, I was distracted by, say, a lighting setup that accentuated what appeared to be really unfortunate plastic surgery on an actor’s face.
The traps themselves are fine, as Saw traps go. But they’re few and far between. So much of Spiral plays like an overlong Chappelle’s Show mockery of TV police procedurals that by the time someone gets their fingers ripped off it’s time to recalibrate the brain back to the “horror genre” setting.
What’s worse, Saw movie victims used to be so aware of their surroundings that their kidnapping, drugging, and rigging up to elaborate machines involved enough cunning and hard work as to make me constantly look over my shoulder in the cineplex parking garage. The idiots in Spiral (trained cops, no less) are subdued with all the suspense of a dress rehearsal.
Speaking of cops, one of the most disappointing aspects of Spiral is its muddled socio-political message. In a sense, this film could not have come out at a better time (assuming of course, that people are anxious to mask up in a multiplex and watch a police brutality allegory after the year we’ve just had). Law enforcement is Enemy Number One in pop culture right now, and what better way for Saw to re-enter public consciousness than with a movie whose every victim is a dirtbag cop (and, remember, according to Spiral’s ethos, every cop is a dirtbag—or so petulant and hot-headed that their corruption seems inevitable).
The Saw films have dealt with police before (which makes one Spiral character’s assertion that “Jigsaw never targeted cops” very curious). The key difference is that there were obviously good cops and obviously bad cops, but each “side” exhibited morally gray characteristics of the other—you know, like human beings do. The one remotely pleasant character in Spiral turns out to be the killer (spoiler?) and even they exhibit a degree of idiocy so extreme that it’s a wonder they were able to put on the famous pig’s mask, let alone rig an elaborate network of traps.
This dehumanization of the police is disturbing, precisely because it might not immediately register with audiences (even more disturbing is the idea that it will register with some audiences right away, and they will stand up and cheer). The characters are so uni-dimensional as to be unrecognizable within this universe.
Yes, Donnie Wahlberg’s Detective Matthews (introduced in the pretty-close-to-torture-porn Saw 2) was abusive, crooked, and hotheaded. But the writers knew that in order to make his character compelling he would need to exhibit some degree of redeemability. His ultimate fate, in a later sequel, was tragic and oddly emotional in a way that I wouldn’t be able to replicate for any Spiral character with a sinkful of diced white onions. They’re all just trap bait, a collection of easy-to-hate NPCs in a Saw-themed video game.
Wherever you land on the “cops are people, too” debate, there’s no denying that ridiculing (or in this case filleting for entertainment) an entire group of people isn’t healthy. There’s a place for empty-calorie escapism, but it would take so little effort (hiring one of the former films’ writers, for example) to make Spiral a movie with a genuine point of view or, dare I say a defensible message, that its current state makes me wonder if this is an explicitly anti-cop film—as opposed to an incidentally anti-cop film.
Whatever the case, I hope this is the last Saw film. The main narrative thread died with Saw VI. Saw 3D tried to juice the corpse. Jigsaw failed to make any impression beyond the intriguing (but ultimately misleading) poster. Now we have Chris Rock mugging his way through a bland crime drama that’s more concerned with 90s-movies Easter eggs than with convincing diehards that there’s a reason to keep going.
Rock is, as I understand it, a huge fan of the Saw movies. That’s great. Tom Green might be the world’s biggest Godfather geek; I still wouldn’t let him near a fourth installment. One must understand Saw to make a good Saw film. The people behind Spiral (including, oddly enough, director Darren Lynn Bousman, who helmed some of the series’ best sequels) don’t seem to understand the fundamental difference between, say, Love Story and Debbie Does Dallas.
Watch Ian and Keeping it Reel’s David Fowlie discuss Spiral on the Kicking the Seat YouTube channel!
