Review: Spiral

Police detective Chris Rock has to contend with being in the shadow of his retired and well-respected cop father Samuel L. Jackson, as well as a new partner (Max Minghella) and a gruesome series of killings of police officers in a very familiar vein. It appears that someone likes to play games, or more specifically “Jigsaw” puzzles. Marisol Nichols plays the fed up police captain, while Zoie Palmer briefly turns up as the widow of a slain police detective.

 

Chris Rock is apparently a fan of the “Saw” franchise, and actually co-wrote and co-produced this 2021 offshoot of the franchise from director Darren Lynn Bousman (“Saw II”, “Saw III”, “Repo! The Genetic Opera”, “Death of Me”). Aside from “Saw II”, I’m not a fan of the franchise, and I’m definitely not a fan of this film, nor Rock’s absolutely dreadful performance. He makes Danny Glover’s terrible turn in the first “Saw” look like Sir Ben Kingsley in “Gandhi” by comparison. Rock has done fine dramatic work once – once! – before in “New Jack City”, playing a drug addict. He was actually really damn good there, possibly even the highlight of the film. Here he’s so amateurish in his attempts at showing grief and anger that you’d swear it was his first day as a human being. Marisol Nichols is pretty dreadful too as the stereotypical angry boss cop.

 

As for the film overall, it’s got a bit more of a cop/detective movie feel than most of the other films, but the results are largely the same: awful and boring. I don’t know whether the blame lies with screenwriters Josh Stolberg & Peter Goldfinger (who teamed up for “Piranha 3D”, “Jigsaw”, and “Sorority Row”), or Rock with his uncredited polish job on the script, but someone involved has absolutely no idea how to write a convincing police/detective story. I did like the film’s noirish opening scene, containing an admittedly effective jump scare, but Rock’s subsequent rant about “Forrest Gump” is unfunny, outdated, and just completely unnecessary here. Meanwhile, the only actors here who don’t give dreadful performances are Samuel L. Jackson and the underrated Zoie Palmer, neither of whom are around long enough to make enough impact. Still, Jackson manages to inject some needed levity (and energy) and he seems to be enjoying himself, while Canadian TV veteran Palmer is good enough here to wish she were given better big-screen ventures to work on than this.

 

I didn’t pick the culprit here, but most of you won’t find it terribly hard to spot. That’s if you care enough to invest in the story (which I’ll use as my excuse). The cinematography by Jordan Oram (who has shot a bunch of Aubrey ‘Drake’ Graham’s cute little hippity-hop music videos) is a bit more varied than in the “Saw” films, but that’s about as nice as I can be here.

 

This is the same shit, very slightly different smell. Look, it’s not classy enough to warrant a better summation, OK?

 

Rating: D