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Spiral: From the Book of Saw is a movie with multiple layers, and the more they’re peeled back, the easier the message of the film is to see.
Spiral: From the Book of Saw takes the legacy of Jigsaw and showcases how his beliefs can be taken in an even more twisted direction. The film follows police detective Zeke Banks as he tries to decipher a Jigsaw copycat killer who is kidnapping and killing corrupt cops. However, Spiral takes simple ideas, like corrupt police officers, and turns it on its head with a message so clever it’s hidden in the title.
Like the message, Spiral’s killer hides in plain sight with Detective Bank’s new partner William Schenk. His entire motivation for killing is to eliminate the corrupt cops that killed his father and many other innocents. He is so focused on his mission that he even fakes his own death to hide in the crowd, continuing to kill more dirty cops. However, in his obsession, he doesn’t realize he is going against everything Jigsaw designed his traps for.
In the past, the purpose of Jigsaw’s games was to give a person immediate rehabilitation for any crimes or vices they have committed. As a rule of thumb, this meant the people in the traps had an opportunity to live, leaving their fate in their hands. While it’s not a humane way to treat any living being, Jigsaw believed this was the best way for a person to change for the better. Unfortunately, in Spiral, Schenk doesn’t care for these beliefs.
Not only does he design inescapable traps, but Schenk also enacts his crimes out of revenge for his father’s murder. It’s an utterly self-serving use of Jigsaw’s initial ideology and shows how the misuse of power can lead to a lack thereof. Jigsaw once carried the keys to life and death, and he knew better than to wield it with selfish abandon. Schenk, however, sees this as an opportunity to punish wrongdoers in their own way and believes that since he’s “dead” no one will ever notice, but Spiral shows how the misuse of power may lead to his downfall.
As Spiral progresses, it becomes clear that Schenk’s abuse of power is “spiraling” out of control. In the film’s climax, he offers Detective Banks a chance to work with him . However, Banks’ father is rigged to a trap, leading to his own tragic end. Schenk believes he can control everyone, but he gets overconfident in his skills and allows Banks to get the drop on him. Now that one person knows who he is, he will be forced to tie up loose ends, which could lead to mistakes in the process.
Banks is as clever — if not more clever than — Schenk, and with the motivation of capturing his father’s killer, he could prove to be a thorn in his old partner’s side. Schenk may also be the orchestrator of his own defeat, as he tries to kill more cops and Banks. With someone knowing who he is, he’s exposed, placing him on borrowed time until his inevitable defeat.
Spiral is more than a clever name for a Saw film. It shows how one person can get too much power and how it slowly spirals out of their control. The film begins with corrupt cops getting their comeuppance because they had too much power and lost it. Now, the killer is putting himself in a similar position as he loses his own power.
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