Today we will talk about the restart of the “Saw” series-“Spiral: From the Book of Saw”.
The English title of the ninth book abandoned the most iconic keyword Jigsaw in the series, but adopted the iconic totem Spiral of the “Saw” series as the main title, plus the subtitle “RROM THE BOOK OF SAW”.
This also implies that the ninth story is not directly related to the previous work, but only inherited some concepts and settings.
The producer, Lionsgate, paid much attention to this second restart and brought in Darren Lynn Bousman, who had directed “Saw 2, 3, 4”, to return to directing.
The screenwriter was written by the two screenwriters Pete Goldfinger and Josh Stolberg who created “Saw 8”.
As for the actors, given that this time the story is brand new, there is no return of the old jigsaw Tobin Bell.
The actors invited Samuel L. Jackson, director of Marvel S.H.I.E.L.D., to join.
As for the male protagonist replaced by a black police detective played by Chris Rock, he and Samuel L. Jackson play a pair of police father and son in the film.
Let’s talk about the story, “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” has little to do with the previous work.
So even viewers who haven’t watched the first eight parts of the series can easily understand them.
The timeline of “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” takes place many years after the death of the jigsaw. The puzzle murderer has long been a legend.
However, according to the basic routine of the “Saw” series-although the jigsaw is gone, his disciples and grandchildren are all over the world.
Although not a direct disciple of Jigsaw this time, he is an “imitation criminal”!
At the beginning of the movie, it was a standard jigsaw test.
In the crowded amusement park, the off-duty detective Marv Boswick was wandering, but suddenly there was a woman’s cry in the distance, saying that someone had robbed his handbag.
Marv Boswick did not forget his identity as a police officer, and hurried to pursue him.
Following the direction of the thief’s escape, Marv Boswick entered the subway tunnel, but found that there was only one dummy in the tunnel.
Marv Boswick was strange, and he was unconsciously stunned by a mysterious man wearing a pig’s head mask behind him.
When Marv Boswick woke up again, he had been hung in the tunnel, and a video was shown on the TV in front of him. The pig-faced man in the video told me to throw out the classic line:
I want to play a game with you.
It turned out that Marv Boswick was once a corrupt policeman who abused law enforcement. Pig Face hung him in a tunnel in order to punish him.
The subway has two minutes to go through the tunnel. If you want to survive, you must pull out your tongue.
Marv Boswick was caught in a dilemma, and in the end he was a step late and was smashed by the subway…
After the subway test, the actor Zeke appeared, he is an arrogant black police detective.
Because his father Marcus used to be a police chief, Angie, the current police chief, is a subordinate of Zeke’s father.
Based on this relationship, although Zeke often acted recklessly when handling cases and offended many people, the female director Angie often took care of him.
On this day, the female chief sent a new rookie officer William to Zeke as her deputy. Although Zeke was reluctant, she could only agree.
The two were quickly ordered to investigate the subway crash. At this moment, Zeke suddenly received a videotape from the murderer:
Pig Face claimed that he would punish some corrupt policemen in the police station.
Zeke and others analyzed from the murderer’s modus operandi, this pig-faced killer should be an impersonator who tried to imitate the jigsaw modus operandi.
Immediately, the game officially started.
The second game player is another agent Fitch in the police station.
He thought he had found a clue to the Pigfaced Murderer, but he was caught in a trap and knocked out.
When he woke up again, he was already lying in a large bathtub being filled with water.
The faucet continuously fills the bathtub with water, and there is an electric wire in the tank.
Once the water level rises to the point where it touches the wire, the Fitch trapped in the tank will be electrified.
And the mechanism that stopped the faucet was connected to Fitch’s ten fingers.
To stop the mechanism, Fitch’s ten fingers had to be pulled out alive.
And Fitch is also a guilty policeman, he was once suspected of violent law enforcement.
Just because the opponent insulted himself, he framed the opponent for assaulting the police and shot him.
In the end, Fitch’s finger was pulled and he couldn’t get rid of the agency, and another detective from the police station.
After the police detectives such as Zeke received the pig face’s video tape prompt, they rushed to the scene of the crime.
But he was late, and Zeke and the female chief Angie realized that the pig face was targeting the police station and decided to catch the pig face at all costs.
However, the actions of the pig face always take the lead.
Zeke received the other party’s prompt again, and followed the clues to the police to a pork shop.
As a result, he saw a skinned corpse inside.
The pig-faced man deliberately left a piece of skin, which was identified by tattoos. The deceased was Zeke’s new partner, William.
The fourth target was the turn of the police chief, Angie, who was kept in the basement cold storage of the police station.
This time the mechanism was to tie her to the bed and pour hot wax oil on her face until the wax solidified and suffocated her.
In order to survive, Angie had to cut off his spinal cord with a sharp blade at the back of his neck.
At the same time, Zeke’s retired father, Marcus, also became interested in the case and began investigating the pig face.
Unexpectedly, Zeke met the pig face.
When Zeke woke up, he found himself locked in a basement with a saw beside him.
This episode undoubtedly pays tribute to the classic sections in “Saw 1”.
But in the following plot, the screenwriter did not follow the routine.
The protagonist successfully opened the handcuffs by using a card issued at the scene.
At this time, he discovered that his former partner Peter was hanging in the basement.
Peter was a police officer who was fired. He once murdered witnesses to cover up evidence, but was eventually reported to be forced to leave the police force.
At this time, Zeke was hung in front of a glass crushing machine, which would emit glass shards at high speed.
If Zeke wanted to save someone, he had to save him at the cost of being cut into his body by glass shards.
Although Zeke ventured to save people, Pete eventually died due to excessive blood loss.
At this time, the pig face also ushered in the final test of Zeke.
Coming to an empty room, Zeke saw his father, Marcus, who was hanging, who was being bled by an organ device.
And what shocked Zeke was that the real murderer behind the scenes was also indoors, and it was actually the partner William who should have died.
It turned out that William was a pig-faced man. He found the corpse of a thief and tattooed it to fake his own death so that he could commit crimes frantically.
The reason why William turned into a pig-faced murderer was for revenge.
William’s father was the witness who accused the black police of corruption, but he was killed by Pete.
But Zeke’s father, Marcus, as the chief of the police, covered up Pete’s crimes.
That’s why William ventured into the police station, deliberately approached Zeke and others, and imitated the jigsaw’s modus operandi to complete the revenge game after another.
The test William left for Zeke is that there is only one bullet in his pistol, let Zeke choose to save his father or kill himself?
In the end Zeke decided to save his father first and hit the bloodletting mechanism with a bullet, and then the two started fighting.
However, William still had a back hand. He had called the police a long time ago, and the SWAT team finally broke into the door, and it happened to witness Marcus who was hanging from raising his pistol.
It turned out that William didn’t plan to let Marcus go.
He had set up the mechanism long ago, and Marcus was controlled by him to raise his gun like a puppet.
The SWAT team thought that the opponent was going to shoot, so they shot first, and Marcus died on the spot.
And William looked at Zeke in distress, then he calmly fled the scene of the crime with a wicked smile…
I don’t know how everyone feels after watching the full story outline.
Speaking of the most popular horror film series in film history, it is the “Saw” series.
In 2004, a young Malaysian Chinese director, with an investment of US$1.2 million, took only 18 days to film a suspenseful thriller.
Because the director had no money, he could only let the screenwriter play the lead role. The car chase of the film was filmed in an underground garage.
However, it was such a low-cost film that was made up and was a big success after it was released.
The film not only won more than 100 million US dollars in box office worldwide, the return rate was as high as 80 times.
Moreover, its reputation is also very explosive, with an IMDb score of 7.6, which is better than 99% of horror movies.
It occupies the top ten list of various crime thrillers all year round.
This movie is “Saw”, and the young director is James Wan, who later became famous.
The success of “Saw” put the sequel on the agenda.
The producer, Lionsgate Films, has been shooting again and again. Six sequels have been released before and after, and they have won a total of US$870 million in box office around the world.
The “Saw” series is known as: the most profitable horror film series in film history.
In 2017, another series of reboots “Jigsaw” was released.
Although word-of-mouth is not ideal, but with the influence of this classic IP, “Jigsaw” finally won $102 million in box office worldwide.
The eight “Saw” before and after, portrayed the image of the most classic murderer in movie history, nicknamed “Jigsaw” John Kramer.
Originally John Kramer was a middle-aged and elderly man without the power of a chicken.
However, because of the unfortunate life and the bad news of terminal illness, he decided to “spend time on studying human nature” after a suicide failure.
Since then, John Kramer has become a jigsaw murderer.
Whenever the weird doll appeared on a unicycle, he said in a slightly hoarse voice:
I what to play a game.
This situation has long become a famous scene in the series, and it is also a classic shadow in the memory of many viewers.
However, since the story of the jigsaw has basically been told, the film party is unwilling to give up this profitable horror film IP.
So after four years, the “Saw” series was restarted again.
This time, even the classic role of jigsaw was abandoned, but some of the original setting elements were retained.
Originally, Lionsgate had high hopes for this restart, hoping to open a new “Saw” series.
However, after the film was released, the box office word-of-mouth hit the street, and Douban scored 5.4.
This result is far less than the previous one, and the box office is even worse.
The investment of 40 million US dollars was eventually exchanged for a total box office of 27 million US dollars in the world, “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” became the worst box office of the “Saw” series.
As a loyal fan of the “Saw” series, this “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” is nothing new in the plot and creativity of the script. It is not an exaggeration to say that Jiang Lang is full of talents.
As we all know, the “Saw” series has three major selling points:
The first is the exciting and varied humanity games.
The second is the speculation behind the game about human salvation.
The third is the confusing suspense design and the reversal of the suspense of the gods at the end.
However, as the series is shot again and again, the above three core elements have been repeatedly used by the series and gradually become useless.
On the reversal of suspense, “Saw 1” is already at its peak.
The story of the whole film takes place in a closed closed room filled with various killing agencies.
Most of the time in the film is composed of the plot based on the memories and dialogues of the two male protagonists.
The protagonist can survive a terrifying challenge only according to the prompt sound in a tape.
It is not as bloody as its plot, and it is not as horrible as it is profound.
And in the subsequent “Saw” series, they mostly rely on such plot routines.
The difference may be the introduction of a new character, the so-called Jigsaw Disciple.
But the soul of the real series is the old jigsaw who died in the third part, but has been living in various memories.
He used cruel and horrible games again and again, constantly torturing human choices in extreme environments.
This setting is novel, but when the eighth part of the series was shot, it was not new to the audience.
On the other hand, although the jigsaw disciples keep appearing.
But the screenwriter and director have no ability to introduce a new role to the story that can surpass the old jigsaw.
As a result, the “Saw” series has been transformed from a suspenseful thriller to a pure plasma horror film starting from the fourth.
The plot of the film is getting more and more routine, reversing in order to reverse.
All humanity experiments are more like sensory stimulation deliberately created for the purpose of sprinkling blood plasma.
The screenwriters and directors put their focus on how to design a more thrilling and curious game mechanism.
It ignores the real core, the astonishing reversal and the suspense of the terrifying plot.
In terms of “Spiral: From the Book of Saw”, the whole story is basically a copy and paste of the previous routines in the series.
For example, the real murderer behind the scenes is the setting of the people around you.
Although the screenwriter still tries to mislead the audience, anyone who has watched the series can’t guess that the pig face is Zeke’s new partner, William.
Let’s talk about the plots of various death games that are the biggest attraction.
Although it is still very good, but is it more exciting than the game design in the previous “Saw” series?
Personally, I don’t think so.
Looking at “Spiral: From the Book of Saw”, the audience’s biggest feeling is that it is ordinary, the plot is as plain as water, and even the plasma scenes are not refreshing.
The most deadly is this restart.
The creation of the new villain William was extremely unsuccessful, and he was basically a tool man designed for reversal.
And without an egg-like soul figure like the old jigsaw, it feels like there is no inner taste!
In general, “Spiral: From the Book of Saw” is disappointing.
If you are not a loyal fan of the series or lovers of such themes, then there is no need to watch it.
Wouldn’t it be fragrant to revisit the first three parts of “Saw” when you have this time?
