After a long stretch, there is finally a film in the Saw franchise that climbs back into fresh territory for me, and surprisingly, that film is Spiral. It’s admittedly an odd choice, considering Jigsaw isn’t even in the movie. It’s more of a side story, a departure from the main saga, and I completely understand why some fans don’t connect with it because of that.
The movie itself is borderline at times. It’s somewhat predictable, retreads a few familiar ideas, and doesn’t completely escape the shadow of what came before. It might even be a little reductive to point at the cast as a major selling point considering the original Saw featured Danny Glover and Cary Elwes. Still, it’s hard to ignore the presence of Samuel L. Jackson, even if he’s not the lead and mostly serves in a supporting role to Chris Rock.
Ironically, it’s Rock who ultimately sold me on the film. His commitment here is remarkable. I suspect part of that comes from the fact that he doesn’t get many opportunities to take on dramatic roles. When those chances do come along, whether it’s something like Fargo or a project like this, he seems determined to prove he has range beyond comedy. He wants to show that he can carry dramatic material, and as a police officer determined to expose corruption within his department, he absolutely succeeds. What makes the character interesting is that he becomes the focus of the killer’s attention. The murderer recognizes that Rock’s character wants to root out corruption, which aligns with the killer’s own twisted mission. When you really think about it, the Saw franchise has never been particularly kind to police officers, but Spiral takes that idea even further by making corruption within law enforcement its central theme.
Rock’s character isn’t just trying to stop a serial killer. He’s also trying to clean up a department filled with officers who would do something as petty as leave a dead rat on his desk. The difference between him and the killer is where they draw the line. The killer believes corrupt cops deserve brutal punishment, while Rock believes they should face legitimate justice, lose their badges, and answer for their actions in court. That conflict gives the film more substance than I expected. The traps and kills are pretty much what you’d expect from a Saw movie. Fans of the franchise won’t be disappointed on that front.
I was a little disappointed by how little Samuel L. Jackson is actually in the film. Not because he’s some cheap casting gimmick who gets killed off in the first few minutes, but because the movie never fully takes advantage of an actor of his caliber. You keep waiting for him to have a larger impact than he ultimately does.
Max Minghella also has an interesting role as Rock’s new partner, someone he never really wanted in the first place. He’s the eager rookie looking to learn from a veteran, but Rock sees him as an unknown quantity. It’s not that he suspects him of being corrupt. He simply doesn’t know him, doesn’t trust him yet, and doesn’t have the patience to play mentor.
The audio description is also excellent. I love when AD teams understand the assignment because there’s still plenty of gore here, and the narration does a very effective job of conveying what’s happening during the more elaborate trap sequences.
The ending, however, is one of the weaker aspects of the film. It has a definite been-there-done-that quality, and truthfully, I don’t completely understand how it’s supposed to work. That’s about as much as I can say without wandering into spoiler territory. What frustrates me is that the ending seems to leave Chris Rock’s character in a situation where it’s implied he could effectively disappear from everyone’s radar, and that just doesn’t make much sense given everything that happened leading up to that moment. Considering what he witnessed and the number of people involved, it’s difficult to buy into the idea that nobody would know where he is or what became of him. Maybe there was a specific intention behind it, but it never fully clicked for me. Since we’re almost certainly never getting a Spiral 2, I suppose we’ll never know exactly what happened next. Chris Rock’s character is left hanging in a strange gray area. Then again, this is the Saw franchise, and it has a habit of pulling characters back years later when you least expect it.
Even with those issues, Spiral was better than the entire Hoffman era for me. Chris Rock delivers one of the strongest performances in the franchise, and that alone goes a long way toward elevating the movie. Saw III and Jigsaw both came close to fresh territory but had just enough flaws to hold them back. Spiral manages to push over that line thanks largely to Rock’s performance and solid support from Jackson and Minghella.
It’s not as good as the original Saw, and it’s not as good as Saw II. But it is a massive rebound from the years when Hoffman was carrying the franchise. As a crime thriller with a dose of Saw-style horror mixed in, Spiral works more often than it doesn’t. Check out Spiral. It’s just twisty enough to get the job done.
Fresh: 6.2/10
