After a year-long delay, Spiral: From the Book of Saw is finally getting released next month. It’s set to take the Saw franchise in a new direction, and director Darren Lynn Bousman has now explained why it will appeal to existing fans and newcomers alike.
The overt gore of the Saw movies was never all that there was to them, but it’s certainly what made them so notorious, and over time began to take an increasingly prominent role in the narrative along with the plethora of elaborate death traps that caused it. Speaking to Comicbook.com, Bousman has talked about what makes the new film so notable after such a lengthy absence of them offering much in the way of innovation, and here’s what he shared:
“The DNA of the movie comes from the universe of Saw, no doubt, but it’s its own thing. I love the world and script that Josh [Stolberg], Pete [Goldfinger], and Chris Rock created here. It feels familiar, yet it’s completely unique and different from what has come before it. I think this movie honors the mythology of the past films, yet charts course for something entirely different. Longtime fans will still get the things they crave; macabre traps, unexpected twists, (and even a puppet), but Chris, Max [Minghella], Samuel [L. Jackson], and Marisol [Nichols] elevate this into something truly unique and special.”
He then went on to discuss why the pic will be of as much interest to people coming in cold to the franchise as it is those who crowded movie theaters for each new installment every Halloween for so many years, saying:
“We’ve all grown up. Me, as a filmmaker, and the franchise as a whole. When I started off making these films violence and gore was a gimmick. I wanted to see how far I/we could push the envelope while still telling a compelling story. This time around, the violence, and gore, serve the story. In the case of Spiral, story and character came first above all else – and then we peppered in the red. I think Spiral is a ‘best of.’ It has taken the best threads of all the previous films, and woven a complex, and scary web.”
Going by what’s been seen in the trailers, it certainly seems that the intention of the reboot is to focus more on character rather than a litany of variably unlikable individuals screaming in mortal agony. The flashes of classic scenarios calling back to the early movies confirms Bousman’s statement the film will be far from absent of bloodletting – this is, after all, first and foremost a horror flick – but that doesn’t mean that should be all there is to it.
Aside from perhaps Michael Bay, the output of directors tends to mature as they age. Bousman is now 14 years older than he was the last time he stepped behind the camera for the series, and the kind of film someone would produce in their early 40s is considerably different from that which they’d make in their late 20s. Spiral: From the Book of Saw will still be recognizably a part of the infamous franchise, but if Bousman is to be believed, it will also be something a little more than that.
