'Spiral' is bad, but there might have been a good movie in there

I am not by any means an aficionado of the Saw franchise. I saw the first one, after all the hype in its initial release and I was underwhelmed. I never bothered with the sequels because my understanding is they offered more of the same -- but only with the gore factor heightened.

I'd always resented how they purported to be trying to be about something -- sort of morality horror plays -- which allowed audiences to justify their delight in watching other people get tortured, because they had transgressed in some way,

Chris Rock, who seems ageless at 56, came up with an almost clever idea for this new spin-off Spiral: make the 'victims' of a sadistic serial killer corrupt cops. What ensues could have been (and occasionally flirts with) a kind of timely social commentary on the national debate around policing but the movie also glorifies the kind of toxic, swaggering brutality that reformers hate. Hell, it even features an admittedly funny Rock monologue about how Forrest Gump wouldn't have survived cancel culture.

That scene actually sets up a lot of what is wrong with the movie. Chris Rock is starring in this presumably because he came up with the concept. And when he is first introduced he is funny, likable, incisive Chris Rock and had the movie been about a wisecracking cop plunged into a battle of wits with a mind-fucking murderer that might have been something but as the film goes on Rock's weakness as a dramatic actor is all full display and his performance is drained of the humor that sporadically enlivened it. The rest of the cast save for Max Minghella and a largely wasted Samuel L. Jackson (improbably cast as Rock's father) is made up of stock cop caricatures.

Most ridiculous of all of them is wooden, inexplicably glammed up captain who is simply not credible in any scene and is afforded one of the most heinous deaths.

That's the other thing -- this didn't need to be a Saw movie. All the scenes of brutal torture, which feel very rote and I am sure are nothing shocking for longtime fans of this series, are sort of tacked onto what otherwise feels like a low budget police procedural. There are some references to Jigsaw, the villain of the earlier iterations but ultimately this could have been just another thriller.

Ironically, the film is set in a vague, unnamed city -- which I suppose is meant to be symbolic but instead it feels lazy like a lot of the movie. I was bored frankly throughout until the last act which is at least laughably ludicrous and entertaining. I did find myself thinking this film might have worked better with an actor with more range, like Jackson quite frankly, in the lead. I also think the politicized subject matter could have worked better in better, more grounded movie.

But alas chalk this one up to being fooled by the trailer which at least promised an original spin or take on a played out franchise. At the end of the day, this is dumb movie that thinks it's smart, which is the worst but also sometimes the best when you're talking about bad movies.

There is some fun to be had here in the movie's ineptness, if you can stomach the grotesque stuff, which I surprisingly could. And ultimately it just felt really good to be back at the movies again.