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If you listen closely, above the blood-curdling screams resounding off concrete torture rooms in “Spiral: From the Book of Saw,” one can imagine the truths behind Rock’s well-aimed punchlines hanging like an orchard above the gruesome cacophony.
In case you haven’t seen the film’s opening scene, recently released online by Lionsgate, some light spoilers ahead: A detective in pursuit of a suspect jumps into a sewer.
The explicit, grisly script co-written by “Jigsaw” duo Josh Stolberg and Peter Goldfinger opens on firm, well-meaning ground, introducing Det.
But with their screen time inexplicably limited, director Darren Lynn Bousman tries to make up the difference by planting a few “Pulp Fiction” references in several frames.
Video files of a Jigsaw copycat reveal a plan to kidnap and kill the dirty cops on the force, beginning with the victim in the opening sequence, one of Zeke’s only friends.
Bousman and editor Dev Singh’s use of flashbacks to recount the deadly games undercut the impact of the precisely formulated kills staged in mucky abandoned factories and stark disused lofts.
The pig puppet dressed in a police uniform pulverizes the nail on the head, while the grimy, color-coded references to “Se7en” just remind us of what “Spiral” isn’t: enthralling or suspenseful.
But these critical deficiencies pale in comparison to the clearest concern: “Spiral” has nothing to say.
The whole affair is a shallow bob for meaning strewn across my uninterested eyes, a miscalculation that fails at delivering shocks or skin-crawling disgust and ends so abruptly it’s as though everyone knew to exit stage left before the jig was up.