Darren Lynn Bousman directed and wrote Spiral, a 2021 horror film. Nineth Saw film. The film depicts police attempts to arrest a Jigsaw copycat murderer and stars Chris Rock, Max Minghella, Marisol Nichols, and Samuel L. Jackson. James Wan, Leigh Whannell, and Kevin Greutert serve as executive producers.After the release of Jigsaw in 2017, Chris Rock expressed interest in expanding his portfolio to include other horror films, which sparked rumors about a potential new Saw chapter. The Spierig Brothers, who directed the film Jigsaw, expressed interest in directing another movie but ultimately chose against doing so. In May 2019, the project was given its formal announcement, and at the time, Rock was working on refining a screenplay written by Stolberg and Goldfinger. The other members of the cast didn't sign on until July, and shooting continued in Toronto for the remainder of the month and into August.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Lionsgate postponed the release of Spiral until May 14, 2021. Critics applauded the film's fresh approach but were split on whether it reinvented the series.
What exactly happens in the movie Spiral?
Detective Marv Bozwick follows a burglar into a sewage pipe during a Fourth of July celebration. Bozwick is attacked from behind by a pig-masked person and wakes up dangling by his tongue in a subway tunnel. A recorded message gives him a choice: cut off his tongue and survive, or wait until the next train comes and kill him. Bozwick gets slain when he can't escape the trap in time. Next day, Captain Angie Garza assigns Detective Zeke Banks idealistic rookie William Schenk. Banks and Schenk analyze Bozwick's death and find similarities to the Jigsaw Killer's method.
Meanwhile, a homicide detective named Fitch is kidnapped and put in a trap where he must cut off his fingers to avoid electrocution in a basin of water that is filling up. He also can't get out of the trap and dies. Fitch had ignored a backup call from Banks a few years earlier, which almost killed him. Due to his history with Fitch, some officers start to think that Banks might be responsible. Then, a box with a pig puppet and a piece of Schenk's tattooed skin arrives at the station. A small vial inside the box tells the police to go to a butcher shop that used to be a hobby shop where Banks and his father, retired chief Marcus Banks, would go. When the team gets there, they find a tape recorder and Schenk's skinned body. Marcus decides to find the killer himself. He goes to a warehouse, where he is taken away. Soon after, Garza is kidnapped and put in a trap in the precinct's cold storage, where she has to cut her spinal cord with a blade to stop hot wax from coming out of a pipe onto her face. She fails to do so, and Banks finds her body after she has died from injuries caused by the boiling hot wax.
Banks gets apprehended while following a lead and awakens in the warehouse, shackled to a pipe with a hacksaw nearby. He contemplates chopping off his arm, but escapes by using a bobby pin. He then finds shackled Peter Dunleavy, his old colleague who was sacked and imprisoned after Banks disclosed a murder he committed. A massive glass-crushing machine in front of him has been modified to swiftly fling shrapnel towards him. A tape recorder states that Banks has the option of either releasing him or leaving him to die. Despite his efforts to rescue Dunleavy, Banks is unable to get the key in time. Banks then discovers Schenk in another area, where it is revealed that he faked his own death by using the skinned body of the robber who lured Bozwick into the tunnels, and has been the copycat all along. He reveals that his surname is Emmerson, and that he is the son of Charlie Emmerson, whom Dunleavy shot and murdered because he consented to testify against a corrupt officer. He also explains that Marcus, as chief, purposefully sheltered corrupt cops in order to sweep the streets of crime more effectively under Article 8.
Emmerson believes Banks may be an ally, so he puts him to the ultimate test by suspending Marcus in the air and slowly draining his blood. Emmerson dials 9-1-1 and pretends to be a citizen being chased by a gunman, prompting a SWAT squad to be sent to his area. He delivers Banks a handgun and one cartridge, instructing him to either fire a target that would save Marcus while allowing Emmerson to go, or murder Emmerson and let Marcus bleed to death. To rescue his father, Banks shoots the target, loosening his shackles and lowers him to the ground, before fighting Emmerson. The SWAT squad comes shortly after and accidentally sets off a tripwire, forcing Marcus' handcuffs to tug him upward once again. Marcus' arm has a gun attached to it, causing the SWAT squad to mistake him for the shooter and murder him. As Emmerson flees, Banks shouts despondently.
In Spiral (2021), who played the lead role?
Detective Zeke Banks was played by Chris Rock.
Detective William Schenk / Emmerson was played by Max Minghella.
Young William was played by Leonidas Castrounis.
Jackson played Marcus Banks.
Captain Angie Garza was acted by Marisol Nichols. Detective Marv Bozwick was played by Daniel Petronijevic. Detective Fitch was played by Richard Zeppieri.
Peter Dunleavy was played by Patrick McManus.
Ali Johnson was Jeannie Lewis.
Kara Bozwick was represented by Zoie Palmer.
Roberts played Sergeant Morgey Silva in the film
Detective Drury was played by K. C. Collins.
Detective Deborah Kraus (Edie Inksetter) was played by Edie. The role of Coroner Chada was played by Nazneen Contractor. Detective Tim O'Brien was played by Thomas Mitchell in the television series The Killing.
Chad Camilleri as Benny Wrights. Speez was played by Christopher Ramsay. Charlie Emmerson was played by Frank Licari. Genelle Williams played Lisa Banks.
Lieutenant Pat Jones was played by Trevor Gretzky.
Tobin Bell, who played John Kramer/Jigsaw in all the other Saw movies, didn't come back for this one. This makes Spiral the first movie in the series where neither Bell nor the Jigsaw character appear in person, only in photos. Bousman said that the movie's killer is not the original Jigsaw, but a copycat, and that he doesn't plan to cast Bell in the famous role. Bell had said he would like to come back as Jigsaw if the story went into Billy the Puppet's past.
Chris Rock's participation in Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
For both his own personal and professional advancement, Chris Rock contacted Lionsgate with his Spiral proposal.
After an accidental encounter with Michael Burns, the vice chairman of Lionsgate, at a friend's wedding in Brazil in 2011, Chris Rock decided to make his first horror film, Spiral, and decided to include some humorous aspects into it. His suggestions for expanding the series were met with enthusiastic response by Lionsgate. Joe Drake, the CEO of Lionsgate, remarked that Rock's approach was totally respectful of the tradition of the material while reinvigorating the brand with his humor, artistic vision, and enthusiasm for this legendary horror property. New Saw film conversations were claimed to have commenced in January 2018 by industry sources, although the Spierig Brothers would not be involved. In an interview with Screen Rant, the filmmakers revealed that their picture lays the foundation for potential sequels. With Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger, the authors of Jigsaw, Twisted Pictures was already working on a sequel by April of 2018.
Following the release of Jigsaw, Stolberg and Goldfinger were pitching a new Saw film to series veterans Mark Burg and Oren Koules, focusing solely on John Kramer / Jigsaw rather than any of his established apprentices, but Burg and Koules called the duo to inform them about Rock's ideas for a new film, with Rock contacting them shortly after to discuss his concept. Other writers had submitted their concepts for the upcoming Saw picture to Lionsgate before Rock came and integrated his with Stolberg and Goldfinger's. Burg and Koules gave the pair the task of creating a pitch for Rock. Stolberg and Goldfinger did just that, and their proposal was accepted by both Lionsgate and Rock, allowing them to compose their first draft, which was greenlit only a week after it was submitted. During the writing process, Rock assisted Stolberg and Goldfinger by reworking the tale as needed.
The original version had Rock's character tied to Danny Glover's David Tapp. Stolberg and Goldfinger didn't follow this route since it smelled fishy. In May 2021, Bousman said he's discussed recasting Costas Mandylor as Mark Hoffman. Tobin Bell's return as Jigsaw was considered until the penultimate day of production, but Bousman and the team decided it would make the film seem like the ninth edition of the Saw series rather than a new picture. Bousman thought that earlier films did a disservice by utilizing flashbacks to bring Jigsaw into the tale. He didn't want to make that mistake in Spiral: From the Book of Saw nor disrespect Bell's legendary portrayal. Bousman contemplated having Bell perform a Johnny Cash song in Spiral (2021)'s concluding scene, but found it too gimmicky.
How come Tobin Bell wasn't in Spiral: From the Book of Saw?
Spiral was the first Saw film without Tobin Bell repeating his role as Jigsaw, making it the first Saw film without Bell.
Despite discussions occurring after the first test screening and throughout post-production, Stolberg stated in an interview with Bloody Disgusting that Jigsaw was never included in any draft for the screenplay of Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) because they felt that including Jigsaw would change the foundation of the story they were trying to achieve, not to diminish the character but to move the franchise in a new direction. Because of the franchise's timeline, Stolberg and Goldfinger proposed an after-credits sequence in which Kramer met a young Schenk after the murder of the latter's father and bonded with him, maybe giving him the puppet he later uses as the Spiral Killer.
Because the film's killer is a Jigsaw copycat who differs from the original, it was decided to replace Billy the Puppet with a new puppet, Mr. Snuggles, because Bousman believed that if the original Jigsaw was replaced, the original puppet should be replaced as well, so the new killer could not be compared. The production feared that using Bell's voice for Mr. Snuggles would raise questions about the relationship between the two killers; an early draft actually featured Jigsaw's voice only to be revealed a digitally altered version of his voice, and the story originally had all the speeches as past recordings of Jigsaw's voice using words in a different order to show that the Spiral (2021) Killer had digitally rearranged the words to show that the Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) Killer had digitally rearranged the words The producers struggled to locate a replacement for Bell's voice for the murderer. Bousman experimented with a variety of female, kid, and male sounds before deciding on the computer produced voice. Only two days before the sound mix was completed, the final voice for the picture was chosen.
Inside Spiral: From the Book of Saw
On May 16, 2019, pre-production began. Former series director Darren Lynn Bousman directed and Burg and Koules produced. Rock was a writer and executive producer.
James Wan and Leigh Whannell, along with Daniel Heffner, served as executive producers for Rock. Scriptwriters Stolberg and Goldfinger have been confirmed.
Rock mentioned in his statement that he has been a fan of Saw since the first film in 2004. He was ecstatic at the prospect of taking things to a dark and twisted new level.
After Rock requested Bousman direct the picture, Bousman, who had refused to helm another Saw installment after Saw IV, turned down the opportunity to direct a Broadway production in New York City.
It was suggested by Burg and Koules that Rock's approach of Saw was analogous to what Eddie Murphy had done in 48 Hrs. with buddy cop movies. Furthermore, Bousman stated that Spiral: From the Book of Saw contained less violence and gore than previous Saw films, expressing the belief that the gore and violence were the gimmick for him when he first started working in the Saw films, but that both elements now serve the story, which focuses more on character, tension and fear.
Stolberg also clarified that the ninth film will exist in the same canon as the previous eight films and would neither be a reboot or a straight sequel to Jigsaw.Choices of actors for Spiral (2021)
Detective Zeke Banks was played by Rock. The character was created by Rock, Stolberg, and Goldfinger during discussions prior to writing the screenplay, with Rock pondering what he would do if he were the original Saw protagonist Dr. Lawrence Gordon and had to cut off his own foot, until they decided that it would be interesting if Rock played a cop who was shunned by his coworkers.
Samuel L. Jackson decided to portray Chief Marcus Banks because he wanted to do something new, such as the climax sequence in which his character is hung up like a marionette. Marisol Nichols was cast as Captain Angie Garza, a character that was initially scripted for a male actress but was finally given to Nichols, who, while being a Saw fan, preferred to watch David Fincher's Seven instead of the prior films in preparation for the role. Patrick McManus auditioned for the part of Detective Marv Bozwick, but was called back to portray Peter Dunleavy, while Dan Petronijevic was cast as Bozwick, in an effort to pursue an acting career on film and television following years playing on stage.
Max Minghella took up the part of William Schenk / The Spiral: From the Book of Saw Killer because he desired to play in a movie with straightforward story-telling like the buddy cops of his childhood like 48 Hrs., and when he read the script, he believed it was that, as well as a Saw picture.
What was it like to film Spiral (2021)?
The principal filming of The Organ Donor started on July 8, 2019, in Toronto, Ontario, with Jordan Oram acting as the cinematographer. It was announced that Rock, Jackson, Minghella, and Nichols would star in the film. Joe Drake, the chief executive officer of Lionsgate, stated that Samuel L. Jackson and Chris Rock, along with Max Minghella and Marisol Nichols, would make this film completely unique in the Saw canon, and that they could not wait to share this unexpected and sinister new story with fans of the franchise. This was the next level of Saw at maximum power. Rock had offered rewrites on site and entirely rewritten his character's introductory sequence. According to Bousman, a sequence with a trap had to be removed from the film because it was too violent.
The last day of shooting was on August 28, 2019, bringing an end to production. Dev Singh was in charge of the editing work that was done in post-production.
Spiral (2021)'s marketing.
The working title for the film was The Organ Donor until the name Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) and the Canadian distributor, Mongrel Media, were leaked to the press on January 22, 2020. Spiral was confirmed as the title of the film in the first teaser poster and trailer, which was published on February 5, 2020.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) came out in theaters and on streaming services.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw was initially set to be released on October 23, 2020, by Lionsgate Films in the United States. It was pushed ahead to May 15, 2020, in July 2019. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the film's release date has been pushed back to May 21, 2021, replacing John Wick: Chapter 4. As cinemas reopened, it was rescheduled for a week earlier release on May 14, 2021.
Lionsgate announced on May 25, 2021, that Spiral (2021) would stream exclusively on Starz beginning October 8, 2021 in the United States. In copyright, Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) was available on VOD on 1 June 2021.
What grade did Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) receive?
The Motion Picture Association gave the picture an NC-17 classification 11 times until Darren Lynn Bousman trimmed enough parts to achieve a R rating.
What was the box office take for Spiral: From the Book of Saw?
Spiral (2021) has amassed a global total of $40.6 million in revenue as of March 3, 2022, with the United States of America and copyright accounting for $23.2 million of that total and other regions contributing $17.3 million.
For its opening weekend, Spiral was expected to make $10–15 million from 2,811 theaters in the United States and copyright with Those Who Wish Me Dead, Profile, and Finding You. As a result, predictions for the film's opening weekend dropped to $9 million from the original $3.7 million (including $750,000 from Thursday night previews). It went on to launch at $8.8 million, leading the box office (the sixth time for the series) but marked the lowest opening weekend of the franchise. Audiences reported on were 56 percent male and 75 percent under the age of 35, with a favorable reaction occurring more commonly near the East Coast of the United States. The next weekend, it held onto the top spot despite a 48 percent decline in revenue to $4.6 million.
What kind of reception did the movie Spiral (2021) get from reviewers?
Film reviewers commended Spiral: From the Book of Saw's efforts to shake up the series template, but claimed it ultimately falls short of providing Saw with the significant push it needs to restore relevancy.
On Rotten Tomatoes, a website that collects reviews, 37 percent of the 221 reviews are positive, giving the movie an average score of 5.1/10. The general opinion of the site's critics was that Spiral (2021) is an interesting new direction for the Saw series, even though the whole is not as scary as its parts.
As a weighted average, Metacritic awarded it a 40 out of 100 based on 33 critics, which indicates a mixed or average assessment.
CinemaScore rated the picture a B- on a scale of A+ to F, while PostTrak reported that 63 percent of audience members gave it a good rating, with 43 percent indicating they would certainly recommend it.
According to one reviewer, "the film takes an unexpected twist or two," but given that it's a thriller about police immorality, "the film confronts that theme in an oddly untopical, almost garishly generic way."A different film critic thought the screenplay captured the grizzled-cop-movie tone and created some memorable characters, but the story was boring, the mystery was frustratingly predictable, and the creative deaths were less creative than ever. Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) gave up being fun in order to be taken seriously, but it didn't end up being either.
Many film reviews thought Spiral to be a terrifying, although irregularly paced, detective thriller, but criticized its writing for failing to communicate possible father-and-son conflicts.
Others praised the performance and Spiral's simple yet captivating idea, although some made criticisms of the voice actor's impression of Kermit the Frog in the role of the unknown assassin. They also noted how gruesome the gore and screaming scenes are for a real audience. They are, in fact, the enticement.
A reviewer awarded the film one out of five stars and panned the climax, noting that it was hurried, half-assed, badly written, and, worst of all, becoming progressively boring. Game over, he said at the conclusion of his evaluation.
In a one-and-a-half-star review, another reviewer criticized the film's tone and Darren Lynn Bousman's directing, calling it "illegible" for its lack of suspense, plotline, and plot advancement.
A second film reviewer appreciated the opening sequence but concluded that it was the film's sole redeeming feature, stating that the idea is at best dishonest and at worst fear mongering. This film, like one of Jigsaw's simple puzzles, is not as brilliant as it thinks it is.
One film reviewer awarded the picture a 3 out of 10 rating, claiming that Spiral (2021) is sequel that aspires to woo Saw enthusiasts and mainstream viewers equally, Spiral: From the Book of Saw is likely to offend them both. It's a false replica of the series, failing to match its most basic aesthetic and narrative standards. It's also a terrible picture in general, which attempts to portray a socially important narrative that it can't seem to grasp. He also attacked the picture for its lack of connection to the Saw franchise, noting that Spiral: From the Book of Saw is barely a Saw film, delivering only momentarily on the visceral pleasure of mutilation, and on none of the series' other premises. It's also the most artless, tactless form of what it plays like instead: a rejected pilot episode for a monotonous police procedural.
Reviewer Decker Shado saw Spiral differently. Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021), the newest film in the Saw series, will be released in late 2021 and is based on the Book of Saw and the imagination of comedian Chris Rock. A murderer on the prowl is testing his victims with mechanical contraptions that are as unsettling as they are brilliant. After a whole SUMMER OF SAW you should know the routine by now. At least that's the gist of it. Several traps have a lot to live up to, but the approach and the aim are both flawed. In his YouTube video, he explains it better.
Another film reviewer noted that it's not a waste of a notion, precisely. But it's hardly the reinvention that the franchise needs, either. Rock's presence gives some fresh blood to Spiral, but after a promising start, the picture merely becomes a fairly average Saw movie with some larger stars than usual—one whose jaundiced lighting and procedural narrative evoke David Fincher's Se7en more than anything. Whether the aim was to determine if a new approach on a long-running series could withstand being cut and diced by the sequel machine, consider it lost.
Film critics gave Spiral: From the Book of Saw a poor rating, saying that the film's central mystery is not handled with grace or style, or even with much thought. Even the death traps have a strange lack of creativity to them. According to him, one of the most irritating aspects of Spiral (2021) is that behind all the foolishness there may be an even more entertaining and thought-provoking film waiting to be discovered. There are just too many sequences with rapid cuts and acceleration. The obnoxious yelling at full volume of the bad speech is a nuisance. For a Hollywood picture, Spiral (2021) has the potential to be both subversive and relevant, but it's almost irritating in how little it appears to care about any of this in the end. It just has one goal in mind, and that is to bleed profusely.
Will Spiral be followed by a sequel?
In April of 2021, it was announced that a sequel movie to Saw named Saw X was officially in the works at Twisted Pictures. On the other hand, Bousman noted that the announcement was made too soon, something both he and the film's producers found surprising. He said that simply because they created Spiral: From the Book of Saw does not imply that the Saw series would no longer be produced in the future. There is still a possibility that Saw IX will be made, despite the fact that Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021) has already been released. This is not the ninth installment in the Saw movie series. There is a good chance that Saw IX will come out after Jigsaw. I believe that they are waiting to see how Spiral (2021) performs and how people react before deciding what the next step will be. In December of that year, according to Josh Stolberg, the writing of the screenplay was completed.
Is Spiral going to be adapted into a TV show?
During an interview with Deadline Hollywood in April of 2021, Lionsgate Television chairman Kevin Beggs revealed that the company has begun discussions with Mark Burg and Oren Koules' Twisted Television productions to develop a television series based on Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021).