![]() It’s worth recalling that the original Saw, which was directed by James Wan in 2004, was more of a mystery than an outright horror film, with two men waking up chained inside a room with a corpse between them. Saddled with a new, fresh-out-of-the-academy partner (Max Minghella) and pressured by the current chief (Marisol Nichols), and warned by his father of grave consequences should the murderer indeed be a Jigsaw copycat, Zeke begins receiving recorded messages and grisly mementos in the mail from the killer-further cementing the fact that a new acolyte of Jigsaw is on the loose and that this psychopath is passing moral judgment on the entire police force. Jackson), but Zeke turned in a bad cop 12 years ago and has been ostracized by his colleagues ever since. ![]() Not only is he the son of an esteemed, now retired, police chief ( Samuel L. Zeke Banks ( Chris Rock), takes the lead on the case and it soon becomes apparent that the killer is utilizing the methods of Jigsaw to target dirty cops. Down in the tunnels, Bos is required to rip out his own tongue as a train barrels down. The film opens with a detective named Boswick (Dan Petronijevic), who is dispatched in a nasty subway trap. Director Darren Lynn Bousman, returning to the series for the first time after directing Saw II, III, and IV, also maintains the visual consistency. The traps are suitably macabre and grisly, and the gore plentiful, although we found ourselves wondering, and not for the first time while watching a Saw movie, how the killer finds the time and resources to build these elaborate and deadly puzzles. Well almost like Jigsaw, since the victims this time are exclusively plainclothes detectives.įor fans of the series, there are the required “torture trap” killings in which each victim is given the means to choose whether they live or die-although they all end up dying anyway, of course. ![]() The not-so-good news is that Spiral almost goes too far in the other direction: It’s not particularly scary, it’s extremely simplistic to the point of repetition, and due to its repetitive structure, the viewer is able to figure out pretty quickly who is behind the string of murders that are being done in the style of Jigsaw. There are no recurring characters, and even series super-villain Jigsaw himself (who returned again and again from seeming death in the form of Tobin Bell) only appears as a photo. The good news about Spiral: From the Book of Saw-the ninth entry in the infamous horror series and the second reboot-is that you really don’t have to be invested in the convoluted, borderline nonsensical mythology of the previous eight films to know what’s going on.
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