"I'm scary, right? Don't you think I'm scary? Come on, say I'm scary."

Serial killers. They’re never really as clever as they think they are. Take the twisted soul at the heart of Saw, who sets up elaborate, grisly scenarios in which his victims can either escape or die trying. As one of the characters explains, the victims technically cause their own deaths, so the bad guy’s not really a killer.

Except he totally is. Come on, if someone straps a machine to your head that will kill you if you don’t get out of it in time, and you don’t get out of it in time, well then he’s killed you, hasn’t he? I mean, sure, it’s got a bit more flair than a simple shotgun blast or lopping off the melon, but he’s still responsible for your death and nothing he says will change that, even if he wears a creepy mask and runs his voice through a filter while he says it.

Furthermore, if his rationale for killing involves teaching a lesson to people who take their lives for granted or are callous, shallow yuppies, but he also picks on people who don’t seem to be any of those things but who make great plot devices, well, that’s just lazy screenwriting. (At this point I should tell you that I had similar complaints about such classics of the twisted-mind genre as Seven and Copycat. Those killers couldn’t manage to stick to their own logic either.)

Saw was written by James Wan (who also directed) and Leigh Whannell (who co-stars) and I’m glad they each have those other careers to fall back on. Whannell is actually quite good playing one of two men who wake up chained in a dungeon-like bathroom with a dead body between them. Cary Elwes plays the other, a man who has some idea of what the killer is capable of, and he does a good job as well. Danny Glover is less successful playing a bad cop. And by “bad” I don’t mean evil or corrupt, I mean stink-ass lousy at his job, which is actually kind of refreshing in a movie cop now that I think about it.

"You can't do this to me. I'm the Dread Pirate Roberts. Is Count Rugen behind this?"

Wan’s direction is heavy-handed, layering on the gruesome detail, underscoring every moment of suspense with as much music as your eardrums can handle and going for the shock so consistently that it ceases to be shocking.

I suppose if you like Seven – and certainly many people do – then Saw might be for you. But if you’re looking for a serial killer movie for Halloween, my advice is to stay home and rent Silence of the Lambs. Buffalo Bill didn’t feel the need to judge his victims; he just chose them by dress size. I like a serial killer who knows the value of keeping things simple.

Gorilla Pants rating: 1 out of 4 bananas