Grade: C+

Verdict: Disgusting. Neatly thought out. But still disgusting.

By BOB LONGINO
Cox News Service

Hey, I know what we can do for Halloween fun. Let's saw off your foot. Like state fair rides that make some people throw up, "Saw" is one of those disturbing horror movies that demands commitment.

You have to be the kind of moviegoer who thought "Seven" didn't go far enough. The kind who gets a kick out of watching somebody squirm in pain. The kind who enjoys eating popcorn while looking at a rotting, naked body hanging in midair, all wound up in barbed wire.

"Saw" is the spawn of James Wan and Leigh Whannell, two cineastes who apparently like to spatter blood and call it art.

There's this bathroom, see. And I know this is hard to imagine, but it's dirtier and more disgusting than any college dorm bathroom in the history of college dorms.

Two guys (Cary Elwes of "Robin Hood: Men in Tights" and the aforementioned Whannell of "The Matrix Reloaded") wake up in this filthy hole of a restroom and find they are each chained by a single leg to these massive pipes. There's not much else of note in the room. Just some dead guy sprawled in blood in the middle of the floor and a handy hacksaw.

Guess what the hacksaw's for.

Anyway, it turns out our unlucky fellows seem to be in the clutches of a freakazoid serial killer. He's so disturbed he selects folks from the public at large to be part of an experiment.

If they find a way out of their predicament, they're safe. If not, they could wind up like our previously mentioned barbed-wired pal.

The screenplay is tight, even interesting, and proceeds with surgical precision. And like that state fair ride we talked about, it can leave your head spinning.

What few moviegoers will like is the film's insistence on dwelling in the underbelly of taste. "Saw" required extra editing to avoid an NC-17 rating (it's now an R). Victims are rendered in the same sort of hellacious visions as the unfortunate received in "Seven." But at least that movie had marquee stars -- Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kevin Spacey.

"Saw" has Elwes, a better supporting actor than a lead, and Whannell, who clearly isn't ready to headline a movie.

Danny Glover does show up as a detective hunting the serial killer. But he's really not in the film enough.

Before it's all over, the movie has spun a fairly neat web. There's a bogeyman in a closet, screams, chills, gunfire, a mawking puppet, blood, and somebody finally picks up that hacksaw.

Now, who needs a Twizzler?