Over the course of the past few weeks, I have been rewatching all the Saw movies to prepare myself for the release of Spiral, the newest addition to the Saw franchise. With there being so much great content at my fingertips, watching all the Saw movies for a second time was probably not the best use of my time, but I could not resist. The only one I did not get the chance to watch again was Jigsaw, because it was on Peacock instead of HBO Max, and I did not want to watch it badly enough to have commercials included. Watching the series gave me great nostalgia for the week in college when my friends and I binged all the movies. Although these are incredibly low quality and gory horror films, they hold a special place in my movie memory, and for some reason I am incredibly drawn toward these crappy horror movies. So I was really excited when I saw that a new addition the franchise was coming, and even more excited when I saw that the new addition would actually have some real acting talent in it, in the form of Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson.
Spiral is the story of a Jigsaw copycat killer, and the impersonator has a very specific clientele he is after. He is specifically targeting cops but more specifically crooked cops. In typical Jigsaw fashion, the impersonator abducts the cops while wearing a pig mask, which has added symbolism in this case from people saying cops are pigs, and places a cloth with chloroform on it to knock out his victim and give him time to set up the contraption. As more and more people become victims to this new Jigsaw, Chris Rock’s character get lured into a trap and must make an incredibly hard choice, and he finds out who the killer is.
Compared to the other Saw movies, this one was by far the most well done, and to be fair, most of them were made before 2010, but there are definitely horror films before 2010 that still stand up to the ones being made today, so this does not vindicate the Saw franchise from their lack luster movie making. For just about all the Saw movies, the sell on them is more about the gore and contraptions than about the story, so where this one exceeds the others is that the story was much more coherent, and it also did not initially have all the gory and grotesque scenes that the others are known for, but it did ramp up the gore towards the end, which made it feel more like its peers. The area where this film really stood out compared to the others was when it came to acting. Having Chris Rock star was a huge upgrade, he was excellent in the serious situations, but he was also able to excel in his element of providing some comedic relief. Also having Samuel L. co-star was a great addition as well. He did not play a major role in the film, but the moments he was in it and throwing f bombs definitely made it better. Watching the older films in the series there is not a single actor I could name or identify, so this was a major upgrade. It does make me wonder what made them want to play a role in this movie. Did they really enjoy the others? Or was it just money?
One of the most interesting aspects of these movies is their use of these deadly contraptions. For the first couple of movies, the original Jigsaw was the one behind the machines, and eventually in the later movies, his protégé was the one in charge of putting the machines together. If you have watched the movies before, you know that these machines are very intricate. Clearly for making machines these complex and advanced one would need to have a serious engineering background, not only in just the making of the machines, but they would also need to have some electrical engineering background. Most of the machines were attached to timers, so the person putting them together would have to be able to put together the machine, then wire it appropriately so that it slowly works in accordance with the timer. This means that to some extent the people in charge are incredibly smart, but they are using their brains in the wrong way, they think that they are helping others, but in reality, they are causing a ton of harm.
This leads me to my next point of what to call what the Jigsaw killers are doing. The best description for it that I can come up with is that it is frontier justice, they are taking the law into their own hands and dulling out the punishments that they feel are the most justified for the crimes, but even this description does not really fit what they are doing, at least in the mind of those doing it. The Jigsaw killers think that they are giving their victims another chance at life, they feel like if the person frees themselves from the trap, then they will be born again and have a new lease on life, and that they will forget their former life of sin. They feel like they are not committing any crime, and that they are only helping these troubled people. This seems to hold the truest for the original Jigsaw killer more than any of the other ones. As the series progresses, the ones who take up Jigsaw’s mantle do not follow as closely to his rule book. He seemed to at least have some code of ethics that he followed, even though it was messed up. In the later movies, especially the seventh film, Saw the Final Chapter, the new Jigsaw seemed to play less by the rules. He repeatedly put others’ lives into the hands of a single man, whereas the original Saw would only put the life an individual into their own hands or a group in the group’s hands. In the later games in the series, it seemed like more people were at risk than deserved to be.
In the last of the original Saw series, Saw the Last Chapter, the main victim going through the tests was a man who wrote a book about surviving a Jigsaw game, but in reality, he had never been trapped by Jigsaw or even been through a Jigsaw game, he just had a scar that looked legit, and a good fake story that sounded legit enough to publish. This seems like the worst premise for one of these movies to me. When he published this story, the original Jigsaw killer was still alive, and since this phony lived in the area where the Jigsaw killings were occurring, it seemed like an idiotic thing to do. Clearly he would become a target, and this would put him in real peril, which it inevitably did. Although the original Jigsaw did not run his games, the original did have the liar on his list of those that needed to be tested. This led to all of those involved in his book writing process being killed including himself. It was a terrible choice for a person to make, so there was little to no sympathy for this victim.
Where the Saw films really seem to shine the most are in the last 20 to 30 minutes, almost all these films shine in these ending scenes. The films are built around big twists, and the first seven all build off each other at least a little. The endings of these movies are what really gives them their juice. If these movies did not take the time to develop serious twists and surprise moments at the end of them, I believe that they would never have made it this far in the creation of a franchise, and this trend continued in Spiral. In the final scene of Spiral, they not only give the slow-mo game over moment that almost all the other movies give, but it does give credence that there will be a sequel to this film.
Overall, Spiral was the best done of these films in an all around manner, from its ability to make the gory scenes seem more real and less gratuitous, to its higher standard of acting by having legit stars take the main roles, and it even paid homage to the films that came before it, it had many aspects to it that gave fan service to the original series, and it would not have been as good a film as it was, if it did not have eight subpar films coming before it leading up to this moment. Although it is not necessary to have all eight films as background knowledge to understand what was going on in this film, it did give nods to the previous films, so it might give the viewer more enjoyment if they get some of the allusions to the classics before this.
Other movies I watched this weekend were Those Who Wish Me Dead and The Woman in the Window. Both films were pretty good, one was on HBO Max and the other was on Netflix. They started out slow, but they did both pick up as they went, I think that between the two, Those Who Wish Me Dead was the better of the two, it did get an added bonus for being out in beautiful nature, where as The Woman in the Window had more of a claustrophobic feel because it took place in one house.
New Rankings:
Spiral (86)
Those Who Wish Me Dead (86)
The Lady in the Window (85)
Saw IV (76)
Saw V (73)
Saw VI (67)
Saw VII (62
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