When the latest reboot of the Saw franchise was announced, the most interesting tidbit was the involvement of Chris Rock, both starring in the lead role and conceiving the story. Playing a detective on the trail of a mysterious serial killer, Rock is joining Get Out’s Jordan Peele and Halloween’s Danny McBride in the growing roster of comedy people transitioning into horror cinema. The Chris Rock Saw movie, titled Spiral: From the Book of Saw, has been compared to David Fincher’s Se7en by its director Darren Lynn Bousman.
Bousman, who previously directed the second, third, and fourth entries in the mainline Saw series, recently told Empire, “Chris came in with a thriller concept. He pitched this very elaborate, dense idea. We wanted it to feel much more like Se7en. But it has so many ties to the mythos of Saw.” While Se7en isn’t quite as gory as the average Saw movie, Fincher didn’t pull any punches in depicting the gruesome Biblical crimes of John Doe.
Unsurprisingly, Rock is also bringing a healthy dose of humor to the Saw franchise with Spiral. The comedian has drawn comparisons between the jokes he contributed to Spiral to alleviate the terror and the jokes that Eddie Murphy injected into Sylvester Stallone’s dark, dramatic Beverly Hills Cop script when he was brought on to retool it as a comedy.
Back in 2004, some critics compared the original Saw movie to Se7en. In fact, in a review for Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman called the movie “a blatant imitation of Se7en.” When screenwriter Leigh Whannell was asked in an Arrow interview if Se7en was a direct influence on Saw, he said, “For me as the writer, definitely. I mean, Se7en is just a very well-constructed film, and if you’re writing a thriller, it can’t hurt to study it. In terms of the story, though, James [Wan, the director] and I never really felt Se7en was that close to our film.” While the hunt for a psychotic serial killer is a shared plot point in both movies, Se7en is told from the cops’ perspective and Saw is told from the perspective of two of the killer’s victims. Spiral, it seems, will be more of a police procedural, hence the parallels with Se7en.
Originally, Spiral was slated to be released on October 23, 2020, to coincide with Halloween, but the studio later moved it up to May 15, 2020. Then, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was pushed way back to May 21, 2021, the release date that Lionsgate had previously earmarked for John Wick: Chapter 4. Hopefully, with the vaccine making its way across the world, Spiral will finally be able to meet one of its release dates.
Source: Empire