Spiral review peerless takes on case series#
It looks gorgeous, and a rewatch of the series leading up to this one reminded me that those early sequels are visual delights even if what we see onscreen isn't very delightful. Spiral works as an engaging horror-tinged thriller for those not caring about its politics or its existence within the broader Saw universe. Ezekiel "Zeke" Banks) solves the case or saves the day. Moreover, the murderer's targets are so explicitly criminal in their actions that it's hard to care whether Rock's protagonist (Det. The explicitly diverse cast almost backfires, and the film's overriding plot flirts with a "bad apples" mentality. Jackson (Rock's retired cop father), Max Minghella (Rock's newbie rookie partner) and Marisol Nichols (the Captain). Not only is institutional racism never brought up, but our protagonists are Chris Rock (as a cop ostracized by his colleagues for ratting out a murderously corrupt partner), Samuel L. However, the film feels oddly gun-shy in terms of acknowledging race as a motivation for this behavior. Spiral features an apparent Kramer copycat explicitly targeting corrupt cops in Jigsaw-like death traps while and calling out the department's "destroy the village to save it" mentality. Since Spiral contains no characters from the previous films (yes, it explicitly acknowledges John Kramer's legacy), we get the same table-setting we suffered through in the 2010 finale and the 2017 relaunch. Saw 3-D and Jigsaw introduced new police-specific protagonists and new relationships between the lead cop and the (potential) baddies, leading to spending much of the running time establishing the new normal. However, it still suffers a little from what bogged down the two previous Saw flicks. Genre appropriation could be the way to keep Saw going should enough folks show up at theaters. At its best, Spiral plays as a genre appropriation of a more conventional police thriller.
Saw was initially inspired by David Fincher and Andrew Walker's Se7en (a classic "rip-off, don't remake" triumph), so the narrative structure feels suitable for this relaunch.
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