Saw away the hype for a solid cheap little thriller

Rating: 6/10 (3 March 2005)

This low budget horror had great word-of-mouth, critics rushing to stake a claim in it and a savvy ad campaign ("Dare you see Saw?")  small wonder people expected The Blair Witch Project with gore.
And, in a way, that's what they got; a film so elevated by hype it was feted before it could be properly evaluated.
Look again and Saw's clearly not some masterclass in nerve-shredding terror but a passable, sadistic little thriller which works despite its average acting because it catches you up in its coldly manipulative plot as it tries to out-Se7en Se7en.
It opens as two men wake up chained in a filthy basement. Between them is a dead fella with a gun and before long they deduce they're the latest victims of Jigsaw (we see others in flashback), another celluloid psycho making some fatuous moral point by getting people to torture and kill each other and themselves.
Can they get out? Can obsessive ex-cop Danny Glover save them? Director James Wan drives it along with gusto and crafts some wince-inducing moments before unfairly cheating his audience in pursuit of a ludicrous twist ending.