Every Twist In The Saw Franchise - Ranked From Worst To Best
8. Schenk Is The Killer, Is Avenging His Father's Death (Spiral: From The Book Of Saw)
Though it's fair to say that pulling off a genuinely shocking and clever plot twist nine movies into any series is incredibly difficult, it really felt like they weren't even trying with the recent soft-reboot, Spiral: From the Book of Saw.
The moment that protagonist Zeke's (Chris Rock) cop partner Schenk (Max Minghella) is murdered off-screen and his body is skinned to remove any definitive identifiers, it's laughably obvious that he's going to be the killer.
It was so obvious, in fact, that Saw fans might've assumed they were being led down the wrong path. Sadly that wasn't the case, as he's revealed to have been behind the cop-slaying traps over the course of the film.
The additional twist relates to Schenk's motives - he wanted to avenge the murder of his father many years earlier by a corrupt cop, who was also Zeke's former partner.
This culminates in one final trap. Zeke's father Marcus (Samuel L. Jackson) - a retired chief who helped cover up corrupt cops - gets hoisted up like a puppet with shotguns attached to his arms, which causes the incoming SWAT team to mistake him for a perp and shoot him to death.
Though turning the traps around on the police is a neat idea, between the clumsy heavy-handedness of the social commentary and the Schenk reveal being the most obvious twist of the entire series, this is painfully underwhelming.