A cut above: Johnson County native has another hit directing the latest ‘Saw’ movie

For the fourth time, Darren Lynn Bousman has directed a movie that opened at No. 1. The Overland Park native’s latest film, “Spiral,” reigns at the box office this month, like his previous horror hits in the grisly “Saw” franchise.

But it had been a few years since he had a box office hit.

“I always equate my career to Worlds of Fun,” Bousman says.

“Eight years ago, I went back to Worlds of Fun. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. We were the first ones in the park, and I went and rode the best roller coaster first. (He can’t remember its name just now.) There was no line. But by two hours into the day, every roller coaster had a huge line, and everything else paled in comparison because I rode the best roller coaster first. That’s how I feel about my career.”

He explains when 2005’s “Saw 2” and his next two sequels earned that top spot, they seemingly dominated every television commercial, radio spot and bus stop ad he ran across.

“Then you go make a movie after that, and you’re on the smaller roller coasters,” says the Shawnee Mission North grad, interviewed while in KC after hosting a “Spiral” screening on opening weekend.

“You’re probably never going to have those thrills again. … There was a factor of getting used to the next 10 years of my life, which was, ‘That’s not how movies work, normally.’”

The R-rated “Spiral” (which is subtitled “From the Book of Saw”) has put him back in the coveted coaster once more. It was No. 1 at the box office two weekends in a row, though with the pandemic, that two-week total is only about $16 million. Still, the Lionsgate studio is bragging that that minimal figure puts the entire franchise over $1 billion through nine films.

Chris Rock, who stars and executive produced, is a longtime fan of the series, and Bousman has said that Rock plucked him to return as director. This installment breaks the formula by introducing a new hero and villain. Rock portrays detective Zeke Banks, a rule follower who is ostracized by his peers for being a snitch. The son of the former chief (Samuel L. Jackson), Banks gets paired with a rookie (Max Minghella) when investigating a seeming copycat of the vindictive Jigsaw killer who is targeting dirty cops.

Although the film was written in 2018 (by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger) before George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were household names, the story was already structured to address the simmering anger aimed at police violence.

“Society is hungry for any movie where anyone who is nefarious or unjust gets their comeuppance. Whether it be police officers, Big Pharma or Wall Street, we’re going to hit a breaking point where people are just done with (tolerating their behavior),” Bousman says.

One of the mandates he and Rock decided was that if the movie exposed departmental corruption, it needed to show the positive aspects of law enforcement as well.

“It was critical the hero had to be an officer, and critical he did the right thing by turning in a corrupt officer,” the director says.

Humor and violence

When that hero is played by Chris Rock, it’s easy to make him likable.

“Everything Chris did was funny,” Bousman says, noting the performer would often go on half-hour tangents about subjects off-camera that were comedy gold.

“He was really good at balancing out if the movie was getting too serious, then we got to do something else.”

Finding humor in a “Saw” picture is not exactly easy. In fact, the franchise has been continuously dogged by the term it spawned: torture porn.

Is there an alternate label Bousman favors?

“I prefer that ‘A Clockwork Orange’ term: ultraviolence,” he responds.

“With ‘torture porn,’ it’s an easy way to dismiss movies that you don’t agree with.”

He notes a recent “Spiral” review by New York Post critic Johnny Oleksinski, who wrote, “Fans of these films — whom I so look forward to hearing from! — are depraved lunatics who should not be allowed near animals or most other living things. Their arguments in favor of the genre’s most egregious titles — they harness the beauty in the grotesque; they expose the animalistic underbelly of humanity — are total BS. These so-called movies are completely and utterly worthless.”

Bousman admits he “started a war” with the Post over this pan.

“If I or anyone else reads this, it gives me every reason I want to watch that movie because you’re a jackass, and your conceit makes me now want to go see it even more,” he says.

Worse, he emphasizes, it thoroughly misrepresents horror fans.

He cites a study by researcher Coltan Scrivner in the Department of Comparative Human Development at the University of Chicago who claims individuals use horror to cope with anxiety, depression and trauma.

“This was basically looking at how people dealt with the pandemic, and they realized that people who love horror were able to much more easily adapt to what we just went through in the last 16 months,” Bousman explains. “It’s due to the fact they put themselves in the mindset of the zombie apocalypse or a virus outbreak, and they were able to say, ‘What would I do in that situation?’ ‘What do I do if a serial killer comes after me?’ ‘What do I do if I’m lost in the forest and no one’s there?’ They live through these ideas in their head.”

Bousman calls his fellow horror filmmakers “some of the nicest, most humble, down-to-earth people because we can live through these insane ideas. We can create them on paper, and then on screen,” says the director, who cites “Eyes Wide Shut,” “Seconds” and “Lady in a Cage” as a few of his favorite underrated films of the genre.

“Some of the most depressive, upsetting sets that I’ve been on are comedies or dramas.”

From Overland Park to LA

The filmmaker was introduced to the comedy or drama category while a student at Shawnee Mission North. He became enamored with acting, leading him to major in theater at the University of Kansas. He soon switched to studying film.

“In my two years at KU, it was the classic scenes of what you think of when you see movies of a frat party. It was two years going to bars every night, going into different music clubs, showing up late to class with hangovers. I was in a bad cycle,” the 42-year-old says.

He ended up following a girlfriend down to Florida, who immediately dumped him. Then he enrolled at Full Sail University in Winter Park to study filmmaking. (He was eventually inducted into the school’s hall of fame.)

With a few short films to his name, he headed to Hollywood in 2001, where he struggled to make much headway within the industry. But a key break involving a script Bousman had written that shared a lot in common with the first “Saw” caught the attention of a producer at Twisted Pictures, who had him rework it into “Saw II” … which he also got to direct.

On a meager $4 million budget, the feature went on to make $147 million.

“I like movies that can go to either the right side of the left side, meaning it’s not down the middle. Those are the movies that stand the test of time,” Bousman says.

He believes his 2008 cult flick “Repo! The Genetic Opera” is more indicative of his directorial style than his “Saw” efforts, which he characterizes as “flamboyant, over the top, Grand Guignol.”

“While I love ‘Spiral’ — and I love the fact I get to work with Chris Rock and Samuel L. Jackson — it’s part of our real world that we live in,” he says. “I want to create worlds that we do not live in and want to escape to.”

Next he hopes to adapt an immersive game he runs in the real world into a dramatic feature called “The Tension Experience.” He’s also attached to direct what he calls his “first big-budget movie,” an alien invasion blockbuster.

As for a dream project?

“I would love to go back to where I grew up and do a ‘Goonies’-like movie,” he confesses. “Something kid-centric and PG-13. I would set it in the Midwest. I actually wrote a movie with the entire purpose to shoot it in Kansas. But it comes down to tax incentives and crew.”

Bousman regularly makes it back to KC to visit his parents in Lee’s Summit. He’s now lived for two decades in Los Angeles, where he resides two doors away from the iconic “Brady Bunch” house in Studio City.

“We live on the most idealistic street: white picket fences, single-story homes, kids playing in the street. And yet, two houses over from the Brady Bunch, I’m the guy who made some of the most vicious, violent deaths,” he says. “We have two small children and two white fluffy dogs. And then in one room, my wife lets me keep all my props of severed fingers and monster heads hanging on the wall.”

This juxtaposition truly came into play on Halloween a few years back.

Bousman recalls, “There’s a knock on the door, and it was a mother with her 8-year-old kid, and the kid was dressed like Jigsaw. They go, ‘Trick or treat.’ I said, ‘Do you like Jigsaw?’ And the mother goes, ‘It’s his favorite movie!’ So I said, ‘Do you want to see something cool?’

“They reluctantly come in our house, and I take them back and open the door where I have the actual ‘Billy’ doll from the movie sitting there. They had absolutely no idea when coming to knock on my door that I was the ‘Saw’ director.”

Jon Niccum is a filmmaker, freelance writer and author of “The Worst Gig: From Psycho Fans to Stage Riots, Famous Musicians Tell All.”

This story was originally published May 25, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "A cut above: Johnson County native has another hit directing the latest ‘Saw’ movie."