Harefooted Halloween: Spiral (From the Book of Saw)

What I Liked: The only horror thing that was kinda cool was the finger trap.  Not only is it freaky looking with long wires attached to your fingers which are in turn attached to a motor that will rip your digits off but the bizzarro metal catcher’s mask that sits on the victim’s head is a nice touch.

While Chris Rock’s humor is out of place in the universe of this series he did make me laugh a couple of times.  The Forrest Gump rant he starts with is pretty good and makes you think a bit.  And there’s a part where he’s forced to apologize to the other cops in his precinct for acting like an asshole saying he’s sorry for this and sorry for that and then ends with “and I’m sorry that I fucked your mother”.

Police corruption and abuse of power is a big theme throughout.  This plays into the idea of the world not working as it should that we’ve seen in previous chapters.  Jigsaw saw injustice everywhere and tried to correct society one person at a time (while enacting his own revenge against those who he perceived wronged him).  It’s very topical of the movie to highlight this particular subject of bad cops but it’s a timeless issue and a good target for the villain in keeping with the series.

What I Didn’t Like: There are two really big problems with this movie.  The first is the script was not ready for prime time, even by Saw standards.  It doesn’t really feel like a Saw movie until the finale.  They play up and stick with the cop movie portion for most of the running time which isn’t exactly what this franchise is about.  The main focus is usually on the traps and the people that are being “rehabilitated”.  I can appreciate the filmmakers trying something new but in this case the movie comes off more like a bad Se7en clone.

The second is Chris Rock (Top Five, CB4) was miscast.  Yea, I know he produced and is the main guy that put this picture together but he’s distracting in the lead role.  He cracks a ton of jokes which again, doesn’t sit right in a Saw movie.  Aside from a few brief comic relief moments in the original I don’t remember there being any humor in any of the sequels.  So to all of a sudden crank that dial way up is awkward.  And I kinda hate to say this but Rock doesn’t do a great acting job in the dramatic parts either.  He plays it so pissed off and moody that he’s not enjoyable to be with for 90 mins.  He’s trying so hard to be a miserable fuck that his performance veers off into unintentionally funny territory (at least I think it was unintentional).

Cliches in cop movies are tricky because if the rest of the film works I’ll embrace that shit with open arms, but if they’re in a film that doesn’t come together they grate on me badly.  Unfortunately this time they irritated the shit out of me.  This one’s got it all: the loner cop who plays by his own rules, fights with his captain, riles his fellow officers, has a haunted past, etc.

The filmmakers very noticeably attempted to patch up a lot of stuff in post production by cutting some scenes off abruptly and/or inserting a whole bunch of ADR.

The voice they settled on for the new killer doesn’t sound threatening or cool at all.

I can’t quite make heads or tails out of the subtitle “From the Book of Saw”.  Did the filmmakers tack it on later because the actual title “Spiral” is incredibly bland and had to let folks know “Hey!  It’s a Saw movie numbskulls!”?  Or was it there from the beginning and they thought it sounded cool?  If the subtitle was intentional though why phrase it like that?  Books aren’t a part of the series, like at all.  The movies aren’t based on books, Jigsaw never wrote a manifesto and books aren’t used to create or solve the traps.  I wanna say it’s an odd attempt to make the franchise, and this installment in particular, sound much more sophisticated than it is.  However, in my mind it has the opposite effect.  It’s like faux pretentious which is just trash.

Overall Impressions: The thing I enjoyed about the original series was the fucking ridiculous soap opera storyline that had a million and a half twists.  The traps are a draw for sure but more in a spirit of “ok, let’s see what crazy contraptions they dreamed up this time” and not “oh man I can’t wait to see these traps FUCK…THESE…FOLKS…UUUUUP!”.

Strangely, on paper I should’ve loved this ratio recalibration with more emphasis on the story and less on the death traps.  But it doesn’t have the same magic that the previous films do and I think it might be that the plot is too run of the mill and conservative.  I mean I was able to figure out who the villain was almost immediately.  With the others yea, twists are a staple but they still somehow came out of left field and put a goofy smile on my face because of how absurd everything ended up being.  They didn’t push the drama far enough here in my opinion.

So not a very good movie.  Lots of problems in different areas.  But you know what?  I did chuckle to myself when they re-created some of that mid to late 2000’s frantic coked up editing when the victim has the horrible realization they’re in a Jigsaw trap.  That’s a funny call back I didn’t expect.