Saw (2004) easily sits on my list of Top 20 thrillers of all time,and even though I havent seen all of the sequels that have come out since the first film, I thought that I would this week check out the latest film in the Saw ‘universe’ Spiral:From The Book of Saw, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman (Saw 2-4, Repo: The Genetic Opera) which has just arrived on the UK shores on DVD and Blu ray, as well as video on demand.  

Whilst the film is set in the same world as the Saw movies, and there are fleeting references to Jigsaw (the villain from the Saw series), you could easily head into Spiral:From The Book of Saw without knowing anything about the Saw franchise and not having seen any of the films that came before. The film works perfectly as a standalone psychological thriller and I can say without any doubt at all that I loved this film!

Detective Zeke Banks (played by Chris Rock) takes the lead on a grisly murder case that begins with the death of a fellow detective and soon finds that there is more to the case than a single homicide. The case soon expands to involve more deaths and the plot thickens as to who is behind it, why they are doing it, and what will be the outcome. The film is super gruesome when it needs to be so don’t eat whilst watching, and for the nice lean running time of just over ninety minutes had me hooked to the end credits rolled.

For a film franchise that claimed its ‘Final Chapter’ in 2010, Spiral:From The Book of Saw was not only for me a welcome return to this series, but from a great script by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger it 100% kept me entertained this afternoon and will definitely be a film Ill recommend.

Will Spiral:the Book of Saw be for everyone? Perhaps not. As pretty much every film comes under fire nowadays, and Im sure people will try to compare this film with the other entries in the Saw series, but for me Spiral was a treat and Chris Rock whilst keeping much of his humour style that we are so familiar with, also played the serious side of Zeke Banks perfectly.

Thumbs up from me for Spiral: From The Book of Saw