Interview: Director Darren Lynn Bousman on the Future of 'Spiral' and 'Saw'

Director Darren Lynn Bousman stepped away from the Saw franchise more than a decade ago and assumed he was done working inside the world created for Jigsaw, aka John Kramer. Then, Chris Rock called and suddenly a whole new take on the franchise opened up before Bousman's eyes. Now, the director of three Saw movies, Saw 2, Saw 3 and Saw 4, and what he hopes will be the first of the Spiral movies, has his eyes on the future of the Saw cinematic universe.

I talked with Darren Lynn Bousman for my radio show and podcast, Sean at the Movies, which you can listen to here, about Saw and Spiral and why the Saw franchise is more than just torture and murder.

Sean Patrick: What made you want to come back for Spiral?

Darren Lynn Bousman - Chris Rock. and Samuel L Jackson, that’s what brought me back. I left 14 years ago now, and I thought that I was done, I thought I had done everything I could do to the Saw franchise and I thought, you know, someone else could take over because I thought, I’d done it. And then you get a phone call one day and you hear Chris Rock is a fan of Saw and wants to make one, I was back immediately, that was all I needed to hear.

SP- One of the things that I have noticed in your work on the Saw franchise is the attention to detail, you really seem to care about making all the pieces of this franchise fit together.

DLB - Yeah, so we, you know, one of the things about the Saw franchise, and the fandom, we have some of the most die-hard, loyal and intense fans, and I think Saw became a soap opera, where each film paid homage and furthered the mythology of the next. And so, when I came on to do Saw 2, it was critical that it furthered the Saw 1 mythos. So we continued to do that, and I think that is what made it so intricate, so interwoven and so connected. And that was another reason why I did come back, is that by the time Saw 8, which came out a few years back, the tapestry was so inter-connected, so interwoven, that, unless you saw the previous 8 films, it almost became hard to watch because you needed to know so much backstory, and so many flashbacks, and so many timeline jumps, that, when we decided to make Spiral we said, what if we created a new soap opera?

What if we created a new series of stories that exist in the universe but are not part of the universe? So it’s exciting when you see Spiral, it pays homage to the original 8 films, Jigsaw was real, John Kramer was real, but this is a completely unique story taking place in that universe. And, the idea would be, if people like this movie and go see it, we’ll make Spiral 2. At the same time, they are going to make Saw 9. So, even though this is the 9th installment, this is not Saw 9. I think, again, if this is successful, you will see another Saw film, you will see Saw 9. You’ll also see Spiral 2 and the idea is, much like The Conjuring franchise, we will continue to make this inter-connected, interwoven, series of stories, which is, I think, very exciting.

SP- Something that is built into the entire Saw franchise is the ability to tell stories within a story, like here with Spiral, your taking on an issue like Police corruption and using the Saw franchise as a way of examining that issue, it’s something that many of the other Saw movies have done as well.

DLB - I think what makes Saw unique is the fact that it’s more than just a horror film, it’s more than just a serial killer out killing people, there are messages, there are through lines, and that started all the way back in Saw 1 with James Wan and Leigh Whannell and it continues now with Spiral. They are always about something more than just torture and violence.

Spiral is in theaters now.