SAW WEEK: Saw (2004)

Liberal use of the derogatory term "torture porn" is often used to throw Saw under the bus, lumping it in with lesser works of lower quality.

However, in truth, director James Wan has managed to pull off some Texas Chain Saw Massacre level sleight of hand that makes people remember seeing something that was far more gruesome than is actually shown on screen.

Sure, there's some nasty torture devices shown in Saw, creations of the enigmatic Jigsaw Killer, but the terror invariably comes from the suggestion of what the devices could do to their victims rather than graphically depicting it.

Saw is really a dark police procedural, striking a similar vein to Seven.

Here the mysterious antagonist is imprisoning people he believes are wasting their lives and, in his own sick way, is trying to make them appreciate what they have... or die trying.

Even the police's nom de guerre for the antagonist is a misnomer, as Jigsaw doesn't kill people in the film, rather he puts them in situations where they often end up killing themselves.

The bulk of the contemporary action in Saw centres around a pair of strangers - Adam (Saw scriptwriter Leigh Wannell) and Dr Lawrence Gordon (The Princess Bride's Cary Elwes) - waking up in a seedy bathroom with no idea of how they got there or how to escape.

Both are chained to strong pipes on opposite sides of the room and there's the corpse of a man, who appears to have blown his brains out, on the floor between them.

They soon realise they will have to work together to try and solve the puzzle they are trapped in.

As the story begins to introduce flashbacks into the men's lives, we are also drawn into the second main plot thread, that of the hunt by driven cop David Tapp (Danny Glover) to unmask the Jigsaw Killer... and his increasingly obsessive belief that Dr Gordon is his man.

Events culminate in one of the most memorable twists in modern horror since M. Night Shyamalan's The Sixth Sense.

You can only fully appreciate this the first time you experience it, but it's a masterstroke from director Wan and writer Wannell in both simultaneously laying out all the clues and totally misdirecting their audience.

Revisiting the film, you will then see all the Easter Eggs.

Definitely not the faint-hearted, Saw is as much a mystery movie as a game-changing horror.

Taking the maxim 'less is more' to heart, James Wan - in his first mainstream directing gig - gives viewers just enough for their imaginations to fill in the rest, cutting away before actually showing anything truly gruesome.

Those films that followed and sought to emulate its style often focussed too much on realising the suggested brutality and not enough on the mystery angle, but Saw still stands up 17 years later as a powerfully engaging crime thriller.