I had few plans to see Spiral: From the Book of Saw. I’m not really a Saw fan, but this is the sort of movie I would have seen just because if I had gone back to the movies earlier than I actually did. Sure, I could see the third Conjuring movie, but that’s also on HBO Max, and unlike some of HBO Max’s upcoming offerings, I don’t see the harm in watching that one at home. So, what to see this weekend? Well, why not Spiral? I mean, I did recently watch and largely enjoy the original Saw, so perhaps this will be fun.
Though I still have no plans to see other movies in the Saw franchise, perhaps a spin-off could lead to a more interesting cinematic universe.
After an opening scene where an off-duty cop is jumped, put into death trap designed to severe his tongue or else, leading to his death, we meet Detective Zeke Banks (Chris Rock). Zeke, son of a retired Chief Marcus Banks (Samuel L. Jackson), is a homicide detective who isn’t popular with other cops due to the fact he reported a blatantly rotten cop years earlier. The killer sends him clues, suggesting if not the Jigsaw killer, then at least a copycat. The dead cop was one of the few who stayed friends with Zeke, so he talks his captain (Marisol Nichols) into letting him and his trainee partner William (Max Minghella) take point. But this killer isn’t done, and if there’s a cop with even a whiff of corruption on them, then this killer has some sort of symbolic death trap set up for them.
Now, as I said, I haven’t seen most of the Saw movies. I have no intentions of changing that. That said, you don’t really need to see most or perhaps any of the Saw movies to enjoy this one. Then again, “enjoy” might not be the right word. Though mostly playing a cop thriller, there are some gory moments here and there as Zeke and whatever other cops or even his retired father look into the case, the movie as a whole isn’t all that satisfying.
The biggest problem is probably Chris Rock. Though he does get a few moments to be funny, most notably his first scene where he explains why Forest Gump never got a sequel, the movie is mostly asking him to be a dramatic actor, and he just isn’t all that good at it. Factor in as well that comedy is subjective (I can’t say that I found the Gump monologue all that funny), and I am left with Rock squinting a lot to look serious. On the one hand, kudos to Rock for wanting to expand his range a bit. On the other, I wish he’d been better at it. He’s in most of the movie, and he doesn’t seem to do much. However, many of his costars aren’t exactly lighting up the screen here either. That even holds true for Jackson, a performer whose work I usually enjoy even if it’s clear he may not be the pickiest of men when it comes to choosing roles. Heck, I saw trailers for two more movies of his coming out this summer. For Spiral, Jackson is basically in a glorified cameo, and even then, he doesn’t have much to work with.
If anything, that’s the problem with this movie: there isn’t a lot going on here. It does suggest an interesting evolution in the franchise, that a new breed of Jigsaw-like killer will target bad institutions instead of people the killer disapproves of, but that isn’t really enough here. There are hints here of a much more corrupt universe, one where killers like Jigsaw and his copycats are somehow necessary to bring evil to justice because the world itself is just too awful to deal with on its own. Sure, the movie is trying to say something about police brutality, but it does so in the most blatantly obvious manner possible. The cop Zeke turned in was so obviously corrupt, there’s no other explanation for how that could have happened, and a movie that really tries to dig into the problem of police corruption is pushed aside to show some gory deathtraps whose victims have little if any hope of escaping. Maybe a longer movie with a better lead actor could have pulled that off, but for Spiral, it’s mostly just kinda dull with the occasional splatter of violence.
Grade: C-
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