Cleverly marketed as a reinvention of the franchise (spoilers)

The initial advertising campaign for ‘Spiral: From the Book of Saw’ had me thinking that a miracle had occurred - someone had dusted off the terrible ‘Saw’ franchise and reinvented it into something like Kiyoshi Kurosawa‘s ‘Cure’, a low-key, mesmerizing and psychologically intriguing vehicle for gloomy social criticism and grizzled cops staring at geometric symbols on walls.

In reality, ‘Spiral’ is just another ‘Saw’ movie from Darren Lynn Bousman, who also directed ‘Saw II’, ‘Saw III’, and ‘Saw IV’. The single measly innovation here is that, instead of bringing back the Aussie guy from ‘Picket Fences’ or that aging ‘The Princess Bride’ dude, Lionsgate hired some recognizable actors (Chris Rock, Max Minghella, Samuel L. Jackson) to decorate the film’s marketing collateral.

This is a reinvention of the franchise’s branding, not of its style or quality.

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