Review: Spiral: From The Book Of Saw

Image courtesy of Lionsgate.

The alleged origin story of "Spiral: From the Book of Saw" is more interesting than the film itself. The story goes something like this: Chris Rock, a longtime "Saw" fan, approached Lionsgate with an original idea for the at-that-point defunct series that the company's leaders found compelling and agreed to make it, giving Rock some creative freedom in the making of the picture.

Well, here it is, and there's little sign of whatever it is that the Lionsgate executives found so compelling. "Spiral" introduces a timely and relevant theme into its proceedings - corrupt and violent police behavior - and then does nothing interesting with it. Also, anyone who thought the addition of Rock and Samuel L. Jackson would liven up this dreary series was mistaken - instead, they've merely been sucked into its vortex.

As the film opens, Zeke (Rock) is an undercover cop infiltrating a violent gang of thieves, telling them a joke that reimagines the film "Forrest Gump" with Jenny as the villain. Once the bust occurs, his captain (Marisol Nichols) berates him for once again taking matters into his own hands. But who can blame him? Zeke has been ostracized in his department after turning in a corrupt partner who once shot and killed a witness who could identify a police officer who committed a crime.

Prior to our introduction to Zeke, we get one of those improbable "Saw" setups, this one including a crooked cop in Zeke's department who finds himself in a predicament in which he must either sacrifice his tongue - this was a cop, we're told, who frequently lied in courtrooms to get convictions - or his life to an oncoming subway train on a track. Needless to say, it all ends with a splat.

Against the wishes of his fellow officers, Zeke lands the case and, in the process, gets a new rookie partner named Schenk (Max Minghella), whose naivete is irksome at first to Zeke. Meanwhile, Jackson is Zeke's towering figure of a father, a former captain at Zeke's precinct who once protected his son from the dirty cops in the department who wanted to target Zeke after he turned in his former crooked partner.

All the while, someone pretending to be Jigsaw, the serial killer from the previous "Saw" movies, begins capturing bad cops and leaving them in dicey situations - one must choose between losing all of his fingers or being electrocuted, while another must choose between hot wax on the face or severing the spinal cord. As usual, these sequences emphasize the gruesomeness of the scenario, all the while glossing over how completely preposterous and, at this point, tired they've become.

Prior to its release, audiences were promised that "Spiral" would take the series - which at eight entries had long become stale and, to be honest, I never even liked the first movie - in a new direction and that "Spiral" would be more in the vein of a David Fincher film like "Seven," rather than another "Saw" movie. It's hard to see the difference between "Spiral" and the previous eight "Saw" movies - it's gory, ridiculous, has paper thin characters, is visually drab and features a lame, last minute twist that I figured out about 20 minutes into the film.

So, all that's left are the gory but lame death sequences; a central plot element that could have been compelling regarding police brutality and corruption, but is never addressed in a meaningful way; occasional histrionic acting and absurd flashbacks (one of which includes the funniest fake mustache in recent memory). The film is appropriately titled, considering how this latest entry into this exhausting series just circles the drain.