MOVIE OF THE WEEK (5/14/21): SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW

 

"Tell me one more time how you didn't like either of the Grown Ups movies, I dare you!" Detective Ezekiel "Zeke" Banks" (Chris Rock) lines up a potential shot in a scene from director Darren Bousman's SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW. Credit: Brooke Palmer © 2020 Lionsgate Publicity. All rights reserved.

WATCH THE TRAILER(S) HERE:

DIRECTOR: Darren Bousman

KEY CAST MEMBERS: Chris Rock, Max Minghella, Samuel L. Jackson, Marisol Nichols, Richard Zeppieri, Ali Johnson, Edie Inksetter and Daniel Petronijevic

WEB SITE: https://spiral.movie/

THE BACK STORY: Ezekiel "Zeke" Burns (Chris Rock) is a detective with a lot of stress in his life. In addition to going through a divorce, he's still living in the shadow of his father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson), the former South Metro Police Captain. Throw in the fact he also turned in a dirty cop and took a bullet when his backup failed to arrive and Zeke understandable seems grizzled well beyond his years ... Which should in turn explain why he has little to no desire to train a rookie detective in William Schenk (Max Minghella). 

But when Zeke (with his new partner in tow) is called to the scene of what was suspected to be a homeless man hit by a subway train, he quickly learns that he now has an even bigger problem to deal with: A possible disciple of the former John Kramer, the serial killer known as Jigsaw ...

THE REVIEW: What happens if you were to upgrade the acting of the past Saw films while retaining the – with apologies to All Elite Wrestling – blood and guts for which the franchise is known? Spiral answers that question: You get a movie that satisfies America's longstanding obsession with serial killers while delivering a dramatic stage interesting enough to make you keep watching between the absolutely gruesome – and yes, I do mean gruesome – murders.

Say what you want about Chris Rock's past movie work; the man has quietly been putting in work both in front and behind the camera for several years – and Spiral is his arguably his finest acting performance to date. 

Spiral doesn't work with Rock's nuanced performance. Even when his hardened detective cracks the occasional joke, it doesn't feel like you're watching the stand-up comic that has been slaying audiences for the better part of four decades. Instead, you are watching a man battling inner and external demons, both of which come to a head once he starts seeing bodies of people he has a connection to start to pile up. If you were to remove the torture devices, it wouldn't be a Saw spinoff (obviously), but it would still work as a serial killer drama – and that's a testament to how far both Rock and longstanding Saw franchise head Darren Bousman have come.

If there was one nitpicky problem with Spiral, it would have to be part of the ending. Without going into detail, the "too cool to be bothered" explanation by the killer takes away a bit from the dramatic crescendo to which the film builds; given their motivation, this moment needs to be a bit more impassioned as opposed to coming off like "Oh yeah – I killed these people ... You want some coffee?" Throw in one seeming hole that may or may not have been left open to some sort of sequel and it takes away a bit from the apex of the story, which is as over-the-top as you'd expect but mostly works ... mostly.

But for a film that is arguably the best sequel of a franchise that most people would have been hard pressed to ever imagine upon the initial installment's release, Spiral avoids going down one in fine, brutal fashion.

OVERALL RATING (OUT OF FOUR POSSIBLE BUCKETS OF POPCORN):