Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Spiral: From the Book of Saw’ on VOD, in Which Chris Rock Tries to Spice Up the Saw Cinematic Universe

Now on VOD, Spiral: From the Book of Saw is the ninth movie in the Saw franchise, or maybe it’s a spinoff, or a reboot, but this is all beside the point because it’s just as disturbing and disgusting as the other eight. It’s notable for its star power, the series drawing in Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson; previously, its biggest name was (checks notes) — wait, Danny Glover was in one of these things? (And here I thought I’d get to namedrop Donnie Wahlberg.) Full disclosure: The Saws have their defenders and apologists, and I’m not one of them. They’re miserable exercises in depravity that all blend together into one big wad of ooey-gooey gore. So maybe having two guys with some serious actorly cache in the cast will elevate the new movie above the blecch — but I have my doubts.

SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A not particularly recognizable actor plays a character making his way through the crowd of a July 4 carnival, so don’t be surprised if that character ends up murdered to death soon. A pickpocket bumps into him and our dead man walking identifies himself as a cop and chases the guy into the subway tunnel, where he’s knocked out. He awakens with his hands bound with razor wire and his tongue — you know, I won’t get into it. I’d be spoiling things, because this is the stuff that troo Sawheads love, the gruesome contraption that gives the victim the option of a torturous death or just plain and simple torture. I also won’t get into it because it’s grosser than gross. All this goes without saying, really. You know the modus operandi of these movies. And if you’re watching the ninth Saw without seeing any of the first eight, you are probably a dodo, literally and/or metaphorically.

Anyway. Now we meet the Chris Rock character, Det. Zeke Banks. He’s a loose nut on the South Metro Police force: He goes undercover without telling anyone else. His dad (Jackson) is the retired and revered chief of police. He once turned in a corrupt cop and now everyone on the force thinks he’s a snitch and a rat instead of the guy who did the right thing, and even his old man wasn’t particularly happy about what happened. Shit’s complicated — complicated like a fox. His boss, Capt. Garza (Marisol Nichols), saddles him with a rookie partner, William Schenk (Max Minghella), and their first gig is to go check out what happened to that poor schmoe down in the tunnel. They sift through the viscera and figure out the glop that used to be a human being also used to be one of their own boys in blue. Clues include stuff, usually body parts and the like, in little mint-green boxes that are delivered to Zeke at the office, as well as red spirals painted at key locations in the city of, well, I don’t know, because it’s never revealed. South Metro, New Flampshire, I guess?

The dead detective is just the tip of the iceberg. See, the South Metro Police has a serious corruption problem. They lie and cheat and kill and get away with it, save for Zeke. He’s the good one, and he’s ostracized. Shit’s bass-ackwards, kind of like in real life. The cops call this psycho serial killer a Jigsaw copycat in order to maintain a thin thread of franchise continuity, and his identity is hidden behind a warped voice and a pig mask in video and audio recordings. And as things go in Saw movies, the killer ain’t done killin’. There’s plenty of bad-apple cops to turn into masses of human hamburger. Do they deserve it? Yes? No? Maybe a little? Are we at a moral crossroads in a Saw movie? To invoke a line Jackson actually speaks in the movie, “Whatchu talkin’ ’bout, Willis?”

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Pretty much every other Saw movie — the grim, nasty formula, love it or hate it, remains wholly intact — with a nugget or two of Training Day thrown in. Also worth mentioning is a blatant New Jack City reference, manifest in a line of dialogue in which New Jack City star Chris Rock says the words “New Jack City,” because a 21st-century movie without two or three nudgy-winky meta-jokes can’t be aware of its own existence otherwise.

Performance Worth Watching: I’ll take this opportunity for a lamentation: The potential greatness of scenes in which Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson exchange dialogue are lifeless and beyond disappointing, written to advance the plot, not take advantage of the talent in the room.

Memorable Dialogue: When Samuel L. Jackson ends up in a Saw movie, destiny dictates he speak the following line: “You wanna play games, motherf—er?”

Sex and Skin: None. Characters in Saw movies don’t have sex lives. They barely have lives at all, possibly because so many of them don’t live that long.

Our Take: Chris Rock spends half of Spiral squinting like he smells raccoon puke, and you’re likely to follow suit. I’m not going to say this is necessarily Rock’s career nadir, because he’s part of the Grown Ups Cinematic Universe (or GUCU, pronounced “gookoo”). But his persona, an enduring marriage of biting humor and assertive intensity, is ill-suited for the Saw Cinematic Universe (or SCU, pronounced “skooo”). It’s as if franchise creators and producers Leigh Whannell and James Wan decided the best way to reinvent the Saw tonal aesthetic was to make it funny and intensely nauseating, so they give Rock a fourth-rate Tarantino-esque spiel about Forrest Gump and prompt Jackson to utter his trademark 12-letter naughty word, then get on with the series’ trademark scenes of cruel and gruesomely creative torture, which are as “fun” as ever for those of you who know who you are.

So if Spiral was intended to be a reinvention of the series’ formula, nobody tried very hard. If Rock was brought in to elevate the proceedings, it’s a failure — he’s dragged down with it, flushed past the sluice gate of the Saw slaughterhouse with all the blood and other bodily juices. He’s stuck in a moron plot playing a detective who’s supposed to be a wiseass, but is more ass than wise, because he repeatedly charges headlong into the nigh-omniscient killer’s diabolical traps. If I could give him some advice, it’d be to look before he leaps, for chrissake. Rock winds up wincing through the final scenes, glass shards stuck in his face, listening to a stupid and boring boilerplate Talking Killer speech, probably wondering how he got here. All we can do is wonder, too.

Our Call: SKIP IT.Spiral is naught but Yet Another Icky Repugnant Bowel-Churning Saw Movie.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Where to stream Spiral: From the Book of Saw