Here, Spiral becomes a full-fledged procedural, sprinkled with horror elements.

The creepy message prompts Garza to escalate the case and put the entire team to work - much to the chagrin of Banks, who understandably doesn’t trust any of his colleagues. How? By systematically killing the corrupt cops - the ones who carelessly murdered civilians, tampered with evidence and lied under oath. Banks reluctantly heads to the tracks, where he realizes that the dead man is, in fact, his closest, and perhaps only, friend on the force.īack at the precinct, a Jigsaw copycat delivers a message: “I am here to help reform the metro police,” he says. (This scene, in which it’s revealed that everyone hates Banks because he turned in a corrupt cop, feels rushed, with both Garza and Rock delivering their lines at a distracting, incongruous speed - too slow to feel like natural, propulsive cross-talk, too fast to register as seriously dramatic.) To keep Banks in line, Garza partners him with Detective William Schenk (Max Minghella), an endearing rookie, and tasks the pair with investigating the train crime scene. The raid goes terribly wrong, leading to a tense confrontation between Banks and the head of his force, Capt. Oram, whom many will know as the cinematographer behind Drake’s music videos, deftly melds the grimness of horror with the energy of a dark, moody rap video. This sequence does more to foreground the visual language of the film, expertly overseen by DP Jordan Oram, than add anything substantive to the plot. Meanwhile, Detective Zeke Banks (Rock) is leading an undercover - and, we later learn, unsanctioned - drug raid. When the screams stopped, I looked up and saw a single, haunting shot of a purple-pink tongue. I wish I could give a detailed account of how Bozwick dies or dissect the realistic nature of the tongue-torture device, but as a famously squeamish person I covered my eyes. A voice from a recorded message offers him an ultimatum familiar to fans: Bozwick can rip his tongue out and live or get hit by an incoming train and die. When he wakes up, Bozwick finds himself in a subway tunnel, suspended in midair with his tongue in what I can only describe as a strange, ghastly torture device. There, Bozwick is attacked by a mysterious figure in a pig mask. At a parade, off-duty Detective Marv Bozwick (Daniel Petronijevic) chases a thief into a sewer pipe. Spiral takes place in a universe haunted by the legacy of Jigsaw (aka John Kramer, the sadistic antagonist whose obsession with testing people’s will to live drives the series) and begins on the fourth of July in an unnamed city that feels eerily like New York.

That conversation eventually culminated in Rock and Bousman, who directed three previous Saw films ( II, III and IV), teaming up to create a legitimately frightening, if unevenly paced, detective thriller. This latest macabre installment sprang from the mind of Rock, who told Michael Burns, the vice chairman of Lionsgate, how much he loved Saw and wanted to star in a new iteration. Therefore, with Saw 10 officially on the horizon, it's likely that news about the Spiral: From the Book of Sawsequel, Spiral 2, will be out shortly.Quentin Tarantino's 'Kill Bill: Volume 1,' 'Volume 2,' 'Jackie Brown' to Be Re-Released by Lionsgate Despite some almost franchise-ending flops, especially during the 2010s, the Saw IP has stood the test of time and promises to be even bigger going into the 2020s - and the Spiral spin-off is definitely helping with the renewed interest. While Jigsaw fell into these same traps, Spiral most assuredly didn't. While Saw VI is a fan favorite, Saw IV and onward weren't the most well-received films, with many critiquing the re-hashed storylines and poor acting. The Saw franchise itself has experienced some great high points and some incredibly low ones too. With a new Jigsaw copycat, Spiral has opened up a world of possibilities to exist alongside the new Saw movie. Spiral managed to take the dying franchise in a whole new direction, and has gone from soft reboot to fully fledged spinoff. With Saw 10 and Tobin Bell's return as Jigsaw on the way, many are wondering when Spiral 2 will make its big debut.

Spiral from the book of saw cast