The Legacy of Saw ”, the torture begins again

THE OPINION OF THE “WORLD” – WHY NOT

Series Saw, which had been, for several years, a successful horror franchise and had given birth to eight episodes, had popularized a particular kind of dread, built on a succession of scenes of torture, invented and inflicted by a psychopathic pervert, whose refinement, from film to film, was meant to become more and more surprising. Saw had invented a sub-genre: the torture porn. Spiral: The Legacy of Saw, by Darren Lynn Bousman (who had signed the production of three titles in the series), tries to relaunch the saga by inaugurating a new cycle.

Macabre devices

The assassin is no longer the same, but he derives from his predecessor the same taste for complicated murders and painful agonies. Between two crimes, a police officer, helped by his father, a former cop, leads the investigation. He is played by Chris Rock, more believable and convincing in comedic roles than that of a pugnacious and angry inspector. The actor would, moreover, at the origin of the project, eager to play in a new film of the series, which he had convinced the leaders of the production company Lionsgate.

This first chapter of a new upcoming saga (signaled by the film’s open ending) is essentially worth the ingenuity of the various macabre devices while everything else, from the criminal investigation to the psychology of the characters, seems to be handled in a way very casual.

American film by Darren Lynn Bousman. With Chris Rock, Samuel L. Jackson, Marisol Nichols, Max Minghella (1 h 33). www.metrofilms.com/films/spiral