Spiral

Torture and sadistic violence Rated on: 13 May 2021

Spiral

What's it about?

Spiral: From the Book of Saw is a sadistic horror film, the ninth instalment in the Saw film series. The story centres on Ezekiel "Zeke" Banks, a police detective and son of a veteran captain, as well as Banks’s rookie partner and their captain, Angie Garza. Zeke finds himself at the centre of a game of perverse justice. A sadistic genius captures police officers and places them in torture devices, reminiscent of the work of the Jigsaw Killer. This is part of his attempt to administer justice against certain police officers for being corrupt or derelict in their duty to protect the innocent. In each case the victim or their rescuer must make choices for the victim to either suffer horribly but live, or die.

What to expect

Spiral is a graphic but highly contrived psychological horror. In the course of the film, viewers can expect brutal presentations of torture, sadistic violence and coerced self-mutilation. This is likely to shock and disturb children and teenagers, especially given the film’s moral underpinning of the killings as a means of making the victims suffer for harm they have caused to others. There is also a real concern that repeated exposure to this kind of cruel violence is likely to have a desensitising or inuring effect on children and teenagers. Given the very strong content within, Spiral is restricted to adults aged 18 years and over. 

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