Avis des critiques

This has that shot-in-Canada/set-in-a-rustbelt-nowhere-USA-city feel endemic to the series – deep down, there’s commentary on the state of the economy in the number of abandoned industrial sites necessary for the Jigsaw killers to create their bloody artspaces. Just as the traps aren’t as cleverly constructed as the best of the Jigsaw devices... the plot here feels loosely bolted together set beside the intricacies of the original Saws.

Interesting ideas are raised but unexplored, and even the traps are uninspired this time around. The Jigsaw Killer himself would probably like a word or two with these filmmakers, people who may have cribbed some of the pages of the franchise but never really understood the book.

The premise is disingenuous at best and, in a moment where scores of citizens are calling for widespread police reform, fearmongering at worst. Like Jigsaw offering one of his facile riddles, this film is not as clever as it thinks it is.

Spiral makes an admirable stab at defibrillating an old franchise — but ultimately wastes its stars, caught in the same bear-trap of a formula that befell earlier sequels.

Spiral: From the Book of Saw, delivers mildly on the torture-porn front, but its tone and focus are decidedly different. It resolves to fix this series’ clichés with a different set of clichés.

The Saw series has always prominently featured cops but never focused so squarely on their dirty deeds as Spiral does. “I’m here to help reform the metro police,” the copycat killer threatens early on, and from that moment Spiral seems primed to explore the present-day fight against police brutality, but it never lives up to that promise.

[T]he film’s emo aesthetic is as dated as the many tropes it lazily drags out and any hope that a “fresh” new vision for the franchise is upon us is dashed almost immediately. It’s as cheaply made, badly acted and embarrassingly written as the very worst of the series and its failings are that much more glaring because those behind it seem to think they’re creating something more refined than just another Saw movie.

And you realize, about 20 minutes into this, that you’re in the presence of a stinker. Not a so-bad-it’s-good movie. Not a bad-but-consider-the-genre movie. Like, a bad-even-when-compared-to-other-Saw-entries bad movie. Rock is doing the best he can; ditto Jackson, for the .00001 minutes he’s in this. They’re one big bantering scene together is dynamic. But even they can’t carry this load.

Spiral delivers when it comes to gore, if that’s your thing, and appropriately dour aesthetics — but not much else. That’s a shame, because the story’s themes, from the unreformable nature of the police department to the cost of integrity in a space that values power above all else, could not be more relevant.

This is still a “Saw” movie at heart, and while the “torture porn” label might be unfairly reductive to a movie that has more on its mind, the idea of watching “Spiral” for its insights on social justice isn’t far off from the idea of watching a Bang Bus video for its insights on responsible gas consumption.

The acting abilities of Spiral’s lead cast is not under dispute, which leaves Bousman’s direction as the likely culprit for those moments of panic, anger, and fear that just don’t achieve the intended power... It’s not a waste of a concept, exactly. But it’s not the reinvention that the franchise needs, either.

It’s been 14 years since Bousman helmed a Saw movie, so maybe that decade and a half away eroded what little filmmaking grasp he had on making its central silly nastiness effective—or at least upsetting. Instead it’s confusing at worst and amusingly cheesy at best.