'Tis the season for many a cheap thrill. That's right-fall is here, bringing with it the typical market for moviegoers who, left unsatisfied by this summer's blockbusters (emphasis on bust) and are too cynical for the typical holiday fare, just wanna have fun and maybe a heart attack while they're at it. While the screens seem to be bursting at the seams with all of the usual suspects-the highly stylized yet somehow insipid Japanese rip-off ("The Grudge"), the obligatory sequel of the same persuasion ("The Ring 2"), the bizarre government-conspiracy-slash-alien-malice flick ("The Forgotten") and, of course, the noisy rehash on a respirator ("Seed of Chucky")-seasoned horror fans will take note of an unfortunate dearth of carefully crafted psychological thrillers: the ones as apt to make theater audiences board up their windows and develop agoraphobia as they are to make them check their seat and their blood pressure. You know the list: "Psycho," "Seven," "Identity"-unfortunately it doesn't go on and on-but fortunately for us, these are precisely the grisly shoes that rookie director James Wan attempts to fill with his over-the-top stunner "Saw."

For the most part, he succeeds.

Its opening shot flooded by an oppressive darkness, we awake to the situation as one of its protagonists does-confused, disoriented and drenched in a freezing tub of muddy water, struggling for air. This is Adam (Leigh Whannell, co-writer with Wan), disaffected Gen-X extraordinaire and the most recent occupant of a beautiful abandoned bathroom with no electricity, plenty of raw sewage, a killer security system and a corpse in the middle of the floor with his brains demurely peeking out of his skull courtesy of a bullet to the head. A bit of a fixer-upper, you might say. Joining Adam in this compulsory adventure in real estate is the baffled physician Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes). They're both chained to pipes on opposite sides of the room, and after a bit of paranoid yammering on the part of Adam and sage (albeit irritatingly nasal) advice from Gordon they begin to uncover the clues (eerie tapes with vocal alteration, hacksaws hidden in toilet tanks, etc.) that explain what exactly is going to happen to them.

It seems as if they have fallen victim to New York City's most recent celebrity psychopath, a man the police have nicknamed the Jigsaw Killer for both his complicated modus operandi and the bloody puzzle pieces he carves from the bodies of his victims. The originality of the writing takes center stage here, not so much in the killer's psyche but his intricate schemes. Wan & Co. have their villain kill from a distance and not necessarily by his own hand either. All of his victims, trapped in perverse puzzles of pain and fear, must make a choice about their own lives and the lives of those trapped with them. Frequently, as is the case with our latest pairing, one must kill the other in order to survive. Through the Jigsaw Killer's chosen methods of madness, the audience members find themselves in the uncomfortable position of making choices as well-and not just about keeping their eyes open-about how far they would go, would they be able to keep their cool and the like.

The answer? Probably not.

Written in a landscape of relentless carnage and punctuated with more typical horror fare (a creepy talking doll on the tricycle, men in terrifying masks jumping out of closets in the dark, "the bad man in the room," you know the drill), "Saw" succeeds most in making the audience member entirely uneasy for not only the duration of the film, but for a long time afterwards as well. Whether it's through the more graphic depictions of violence in the killer's crimes-a woman with her head in some medieval headgear must make some brutal decisions if she is to stay alive; a post-suicidal man has to crawl through razor wire to escape what might indeed become his tomb; a man is impaled by rusty sword; Dr. Gordon, too, must make a rather repugnant decision himself if he wants to save his wife and child-or Wan's more subtle renderings of terror (I've never seen a man make more use of a dark room), "Saw" is liable to get into your head and stay there for quite a while.

This should by no means make you think, though, that the film is all muscle and no finesse. Apart from some unavoidable acting snafus and some inevitable cheesier lines that seem characteristic of the horror/thriller genre, "Saw" is a remarkably tight film. What puts it on par with such genre greats as "Seven" are its motivations-the killer is not a random sadist, but rather a very calculating one, choosing each of his victims as carefully as he chooses their manner of demise. A mysterious stranger with an even more mysterious lust for life, he picks each victim carefully on the premise that he might be able to "save" them by giving them another chance to appreciate life-the drug addict, the voyeur, the faker, the philanderer. As we delve further and further into the puzzle unfolding before us, we must delve also into the psyche of not only the killer but of the victims as an eerily digitally altered voice asks them the question over and over again: "Are you grateful?"

I can tell you one thing, I was grateful when "Saw" was over. I'll be even more grateful when I can sleep without a nightlight.