Spiral director says the Saw sequel won’t be what fans are expecting

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

I'll admit to being a big fan of the SAW franchise, but after seven films of increasingly convoluted mythology, the series came to a conclusion with SAW: THE FINAL CHAPTER, but as any good horror fan knows, anything that dares call itself THE FINAL CHAPTER definitely won't be. John Kramer (Tobin Bell) would returne seven years later for JIGSAW, and now the franchise will be receiving something of a soft-reboot with SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW.

The upcoming film stars Chris Rock and Max Minghella as a pair of detectives who take charge of a grisly investigation into a series of murders that are eerily reminiscent of the city's gruesome past. Unwitting trapped in a deepening mystery, the detectives find themselves at the center of the killer's morbid game. Although SPIRAL has been helmed by Darren Lynn Bousman, who directed SAW II, SAW III, and SAW IV, the new film is set to take the franchise in a brand-new direction that fans might not be expecting. "The Saw franchise is such a well-oiled machine. I can’t even explain the nostalgia of being able to do another one now," Bousman said while speaking with NME recently. "But this movie is so unique and so different than what I think people expect and are ready for. That’s what made it so exciting to get back to the franchise. I read the script and I thought, ‘Holy shit! This is actually really good.’ It didn’t feel like a sequel at all. It feels like a Saw movie and it has some very Saw elements in it but it’s definitely its own unique thing."

Although Bousman had said that he never had any intention of returning to the SAW franchise, that all changed with the involvement of Chris Rock, particularly when Bousman saw just how involved Rock would be in the project. "He was very involved from the original conception of the script, the rewrite, the casting, right up to being at all the locations that we were filming at," Bousman added. "It was an important movie for him and you could tell that and I hope that this is the first of many projects I get to work on with the guy."

The official synopsis for SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW:

Working in the shadow of an esteemed police veteran (Samuel L. Jackson), brash detective Ezekiel "Zeke" Banks (Chris Rock) and his rookie partner William Schenk (Max Minghella) take charge of a grisly investigation into murders that are eerily reminiscent of the city's gruesome past. Unwittingly trapped in a deepening mystery, Zeke finds himself at the center of the killer's morbid game.

SPIRAL: FROM THE BOOK OF SAW is slated to hit theaters on May 21, 2021.