Spiral: From the Book of Saw Review (Film, 2021)

I wish more long-standing horror series took risks with their properties like Lionsgate does with the Saw series. Spiral: From the Book of Saw is a spinoff film, in the way that Annabelle and its sequels branch off from The Conjuring without being the same series anymore. This is the world of Saw, but a separate story that takes place in the same universe.

I’ll say right away that I don’t think Spiral totally works. I’m here for the big swings at expanding this universe and telling a different story with a well-known series.

Spiral is all about the police investigating a Jigsaw copycat killer. This killer’s victims are all police officers, forced to either disable themselves or die. The opening sequence sees an officer trapped in front of a moving subway train, his tongue locked into a vice. Either he jumps off the small platform he’s on so he can never provide false testimony again or he will be struck and killed by the train. The ironic punishments for allegedly corrupt police officers only get worse from here.

Darren Lynn Bousman returns to Saw for the first time since Saw IV. It is very much a Bousman film. There’s an extremity to his cinematic work that is meant to underline, bold, and italicize what is wrong with society through extreme violence. The protagonist, Detective Zeke Banks, leads the story, but is forced into a mostly reactive role. He is not in control of the story as this story has been scripted by the copycat killer with an axe to grind against police corruption. Banks becomes our onscreen surrogate, trying to do everything right even when the odds seem impossible.

My problems with Spiral are not the plot, performances, style, or direction. The issue is the tone. This film is brutal in ways I haven’t seen since…well, Bousman was hyped up by Lionsgate to make each Saw film more extreme than the last. That opening sequence with the tongue trap is child’s play compared to every other trap in the game. This copycat killer’s goal is to prevent every police officer caught up in the game from ever working again, and death feels like the more merciful option in just about every scene.

This is the equivalent of a Saw film where every trap is either the furnace trap in Saw II or the crucifix in Saw III. Yes, there is a way to beat these traps if everything goes perfect and no one hesitates or panics. Chances are, someone told “cause irreparable damage to your body or die” is not going to be calm; neither is the person who goes from room to room facing those same circumstances over and over again. This creates a hopeless Saw film.

Many of the later Saw entries play with the false sense of success followed by the let down of the all is lost moment. Spiral never gives us a chance to even hope this could end well. We have a conveyor belt of victims who exist to die. It’s the worst of the worst of slasher logic made even more unbearable by clearly choosing worthy victims for once. Every police officer involved in the traps is allegedly abusing their power just to put people in jail regardless of guilt or innocence. Even if you respect or trust Detective Banks, his coworkers don’t make a particularly strong case for their survival based on their disregard for humanity and justice.

Put aside the effectiveness of Spiral as a story in the Saw universe. This is a very different take on the property and that’s exciting. This series hit some of its greatest highs by commenting on predatory institutions. Bousman’s Saw II was literally a commentary on police corruption, connecting the victims of the game by having falsified evidence presented against them by one specific officer. I’m all here for crime thriller spin-offs of the Saw series.

Remember, the first Annabelle movie had to justify its existence through the lens of The Conjuring. It was a mixed bag of a paranormal horror with a lot of potential. Then it was followed by two of the best films in the entire The Conjuring universe: Annabelle: Creation and Annabelle Comes Home.

I could see this From the Book of Saw spinoff series growing in a similar way. What did Spiral keep from the original series? Traps, a protagonist treated with suspicion because of his proximity to victims, and the pig masks. The rest has more in common with a David Fincher crime thriller than the original Jigsaw. Future films can push even further away based on the groundwork laid in Spiral. That’s what I find exciting here.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw is playing in theaters.