Spiral: From The Book Of Saw Review - 4 Ups & 6 Downs

By Jack Pooley / May 17, 2021

3. The Brutal Traps

Lionsgate

While it's definitely fair to say that Spiral is on the tamer end of the Saw series where gore is concerned, it does at least deliver a number of memorably gruesome traps.

Two traps in particular stand out in their inspired, creative nastiness: a trap involving fingers and another involving shards of glass. In both cases Bousman lingers on the bodily mutilation in nauseating fashion, and even hardcore Saw fans are sure to be left wincing.

If the gore had gotten relatively cartoonish by the time Saw: The Final Chapter was released, Spiral's blood-letting feels like more of a restrained compromise: infrequent but plentiful when it does arrive.

By any measure, it's more viscerally offputting than Jigsaw's strangely benign assortment of traps.