![]() Jackson), a string of Jigsaw copycat killings begin besieging the city. As Chris Rock’s good cop Zeke is haunted by the decision he made on the force years ago to turn in a bad cop (something his co-workers remind him of every moment they can) and burdened by his fractured relationship with his father and former police chief (Samuel L. Jackson) and the controversial but timely subject of police brutality. ![]() During its six-year franchise run (not counting a later reboot), Saw went from a major genre influencer to being an outlier in its awareness of other trends in horror filmmaking and the graphicness of its violence (which once signaled and seemed to be reactive to post-9/11, post-Abu Ghraib anxieties, now, if not passé, then at least not hip).īut, despite a very successful reboot, 2017’s Jigsaw (though it didn’t match the franchise’s earlier peaks, it grossed a respectable $102.9 million worldwide, nearly matching the original’s worldwide gross), the torture-porn genre (a term coined by New York Magazine’s David Edelstein back in 2006) that Saw helped popularize has wavered in horror culture’s consciousness, with other prestige-y approaches to the genre (like 2018’s Ari Aster bucolic nightmare Hereditary) and a renaissance in Black-focused horror works (like Get Out and Amazon’s Them) establishing a foothold in the discourse.Īfter a four-year hiatus from the big screen, further delayed in part due to the pandemic (the film was originally supposed to be released last October), Spiral: From the Book of Saw is the trap-infested series’s bet on blending those en-vogue horror aesthetics, bringing with it the gravitas of its somewhat surprising executive producer and star Chris Rock (acting alongside Samuel L. On a budget of $1.2 million, the film would go on to gross $103 million worldwide, and gave birth to a reliably successful and provocative franchise that includes several sequels (with Darren Lynn Bousman ushering the series into multiverse territory after stepping in to direct Saw II, Saw III, and Saw IV), two video games, bountiful merch, and the kind of indelible iconography that turns one’s blood cold and that many horror movies only dream of. In just shy of two hours, the future Hollywood visionaries threw their audience into a proto-escape-room nightmare, and gave them a new language of gruesome, harrowing horror, filled with twisted morality games and deeply cut flesh. ![]() The franchise was more than just a gross-out gorefest, too upon its release in 2004, the first Saw film introduced the world to director and co-writer James Wan (who later directed The Conjuring and Aquaman) and co-writer Leigh Whannell (who helmed 2020’s The Invisible Man). There was a time when it didn’t feel like a proper Halloween until a new Saw movie hit theaters, ready to gauge out the eyes of its squeamish, enraptured audiences. ![]()
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