IF you fancy spending your Saturday night peeping out nervously from behind a cushion, then Saw could be the movie for you.

In terms of gruesome fun, this is one of the smartest, darkest horror films to come out of Hollywood in a long time.

And like David Fincher's 1995 hit film Seven, staring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman, it keeps viewers glued to their seats until the final, twisted climax.

Swiftly, it plunges viewers into a nightmare scenario where Dr Larry Gordon (Cary Elwes) wakes up to find himself chained up in a dingy torture chamber with a stranger named Adam. A corpse with a gun and a cassette player lies between them.

Together they must hatch a plan to escape this cell, which has been specially set up for them by serial killer Jigsaw.

Between the two men's conversation - where they realise they are not such strangers - viewers are teased with gruesome flashbacks of Jigsaw's previous crimes leading to a horrifying crescendo.

Danny Glover also stars as the troubled cop on Jigsaw's case in a sub-plot which weaves fairly neatly into the main story.

Saw is by no means perfect, at times the acting is patchy and the plot does have its flaws, it also resorts to a few pitiful horror film clichs.

However, it is still a compelling and brutal film deserved of its newly found cult status and certainly worth a Saturday night's viewing.

EB