Spiral: From the Book of Saw
Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Writer: Josh Stolberg, Pete Goldfinger
Sequel to: Saw, Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI, Saw 3D, Jigsaw
Cast: Chris Rock, Max Minghella, Samuel L. Jackson, Marisol Nichols, Dan Petronijevic, Richard Zeppieri
Seen on: 2.10.2025

Plot:
Detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock) has a reputation as a hard-ass, and he likes to work alone. Captain Angie Garza (Marisol Nichols) assigns him a new partner anyway, rookie William Schenk (Max Minghella), as well as a new case: the murder of a fellow officer (Dan Petronijevic). Banks finds that the murder bears the handwriting of Jigsaw, although he has been long gone. As more cops are being targeted and nobody trusts Zeke’s hunch about a Jigsaw copycat, he has to race to figure things out.

Look, by now we have probably all gathered that I am not a great fan of the Saw movies and only came this far because I am a stubbon fucker sometimes. But Spiral really has nothing to add to the series, although it has all the necessary ingredients to do something fresh.

Spiral tries to do two, or even three interesting things and fails them all. The first is that it tries to bring Chris Rock’s brand of comedy to the gore oft he Saw movies. This attempt of mixing an 80s buddy cop comedy wtih a gory horror movie is really intriguing – on paper. In action, they didn’t manage to tie those halves together, but they feel constantly at odds, rubbing uncomfortably against each other.

The second thing is that it actually features Black characters in more than just throw-away roles. Coupled with the third thing – bringing Jigsaw-like morality to police criticism – this could have given the film a political statement. It could have allowed the often racialized police violence to be questioned by the film. It could have been more than just a flimsy excuse to give us (mostly uninspired) traps and gore. Especially since the pig masks were already established within the Jigsaw universe.

No such luck here, though. The film is not interested in any of that. In fact, it doesn’t feel like it is interested in much of anything at all. As such, it also leaves the audience pretty uninterested. Why should I care when not even the filmmakers do?

In fact, when I was writing the review for Jigsaw, I kept writing that it was the last Saw film I had seen. Then I had to go back and change it after referencing my notes, because dammit, there was Spiral. I had completely forgotten that it, too, existed and that I watched it. And that might be the worst part of it: it’s just bland, boring, forgettable.

Summarizing: I’m done, yay! Better to be done before Spiral, though.