Amph What was the last movie you saw? (Ver. 2)

Spiral
In no way shape or form am I a horror movie fan but I did like the first Saw movie. It was original (or as original as a horror movie can be) and the twist at the end was good. Plus I like the ending music too. The sequels went straight downhill. This could easily be Saw whatever hell number they're on. I guess since Tobin Bell's not anywhere in it, they renamed it. Chris Rock's probably a better actor than anyone who was previously in a Saw movie so that helps this one. Samuel L. Jackson doesn't have a ton of screentime but he's typically Samuel L. Jackson. The plot is alright and tries to tackle police corruption but the twist jumps from A to Z in a real short time. The one complaint I have is that the filmmakers used the worst voice for the villains voice during all the taped messages.

 

Spiral: From the Book of Saw (2021)
Viewing Experience: IMAX (2D)

“You give a woman six hundred Tuesdays, it ain’t worth three Saturday nights.”

This spin-off of the Saw franchise presents a different style and feel, with its LA heatwave setting almost being a throwback to films from the late 80’s or early 90’s- though the trap sequences retain the more frantic camerawork and editing consistent with the previous eight films.

This film, though, is surprisingly more gruesome than the previous 8 films- to the point where the violence and gore of the trap sequences truly do begin to feel gratuitous. That does reflect them serving a different purpose in the story (they are about vindictive punishment, not painful redemption), but it makes this one much more uncomfortable to watch at times and it feels like they could have been left as off-screen events and not affected the story.



The cast is generally good and the film keeps you guessing at multiple suspects throughout. However, the ultimate villain lacks the charisma of previous Jigsaw killers and apprentices. The performance does get better once revealed, but it’s very difficult to follow a recognizable actor like Tobin Bell with a comparatively unknown performer. Chris Rock keeps things moving through the drama and occasional quips (including a nod to New Jack City), though the film could have used more scenes with Samuel L. Jackson (but when is that not the case?).

The new motivation and ultimate plan of the villain adds an interesting twist and approach to things, even if it’s not as mind blowing as some previous ones. Oddly enough, its topical aspirations make it work both as a present-day story and as a 90’s-set film homage as far as style goes.

 

Trap descriptions:

Spoiler

One man is hung/clamped by his tongue, forced to try to bite it off or be hit by a train. Another is forced to have a machine rip all his fingers off slowly without opening his mouth to scream or be electrocuted. Another must choose to either sever their spinal column and be paralyzed or be waterboarded and scalded to death by boiling wax. The least gruesome one (but also the most intense sequence) involves being slowly sliced/shredded/stabbed by a storm of projectile-force shards of broken glass.

There are one or two others but those are the main ones. The finger one is particularly squeamish, IMO.

 

Honestly, with the Saw series, there is less of a reason for those films to be called torture porn than some of the other films that followed in its wake. The Saw films are, at their core, usually about a criminal investigation or mystery- ones that often have a very good twist. And framed around an evolving, interconnected mythology (especially 1-6) involving something of an anti-hero killer.

The trap sequences rarely feel exploitative (thus my critique of Spiral really doing so in a few instances) and are usually presentations of an elaborate puzzle mixed with an extreme moral quandary (albeit it one with potentially gory and gruesome results, depending on the outcome) usually tied to the victim's history or behavior (and, in doing so, the traps actually then reflect character insights and present an opportunity to explore those characters- either in brief or through flashbacks). Those that don't, usually do so intentionally as a point of contrast with the others to develop the character of the killer behind them. In other words, they have a story purpose.

Since the real torture porn films that decided to focus on the gore (like Hostel) took inspiration from that facet of Saw, it retroactively got (unfairly) lumped together with them under the "torture porn" label back when these films were first coming out and that term started to emerge. Those films tend to be more of a mixture between a slasher and hillbilly horror splatterfilm that just happen to take stylistic cues from Se7en and Saw. Their analogs to the trap sequences rarely serve as deep a story purpose as what is found in the Saw series.

 

Those Who Wish Me Dead
It kind of operates on the bare minimum of a plot. Guy has some information about criminals, they want him dead (which they succeed but not his son). Not much more elaborated than that. The action comes few and far between but some of the fire scenes look pretty cool. Aiden Gillen was probably the best as one of the mercenary hitmen and Jon Bernthal too was good. The rest of the cast doesn't do much.

 

Raya and the Last Dragon (2021)
Viewing Experience: Theatrical



This one was alright. Visually, it is tremendous. The world it builds and the creatures that populate it are fantastic. The characters and cast are fun. The action is good. The sword is damn cool. The score has spots that stand out while feeling familiar enough that I wasn’t surprised when the credits revealed it to be James Newton Howard. Though I wouldn’t necessarily say the score stands out as a whole.

But, in general, I never really felt like the film connected strongly or built any real suspense or intensity. Maybe because it feels like it’s almost rushing through all of these great environments and different nations where I’d like to spend more time in, in order to facilitate the “jewel shard quest” structure of the film. I think this could have been an excellent limited series that ran for four to six 45-to-60-min episodes.

A more specific area that the film ends up being weaker for is in Awkwafina’s titular dragon character. It’s not meant to be Robin William’s Genie or Eddie Murphy’s Mu-Shu, but they sometimes push the character towards that line and it doesn’t really work. The softer, non-comedic moments for the character work much better but I don’t think they found the right balance. Some of the other supporting cast could have benefited from more screen time as well (especially Benedict Wong’s character), but that could just be circling back around to the “rushing through the jewel quest” runtime constraint issue.

So, while an average entry into the modern Disney catalog, it wouldn’t have been worth paying for Premiere Access to (even though that time period has now expired), but worth a rental at the very least (or by using A-List in theaters)- if only for the gorgeous visuals and animation.

Obligatory (warning: language):

Well, I wouldn't want to be so dismissive of them (especially since I haven't seen several of them)- even extreme-yet-shlocky horror has its merits. They just tend to have very specific experiences (one reason why there are so many sub-genres of horror and how even ones of questionable quality, limited budget or specific exploitative features can find an audience). But I do think it's fair to say that most of the ones in question here have lower aspirations from a character and story perspective than the Saw series usually does. And definitely do not take an approach of making the extreme elements as integrated into those aspirations as it does.

 

Saw is definitely more cerebral than most, if not all, of the slasher genre (probably even Halloween- the only reason Halloween is still a better film is that it's just so damn good at what it does). It has more in common with Se7en and Law & Order than anything else.