Saw

Two men wake up in a dingy bathroom lit by flickering neon lights and full of rusty pipes of which they are chained to by the leg . The body of a man with his head blown off and a tape recorder in his hand lies between them. The are chained to the pipes. Welcome to the next stage of the serial killer puzzle film. The writer and director definitely seen all of David Fincher's films. Saw is an amalgamation of Seven, The Game and Panic Room. Throw in a bit of Vincenzo Natali's Cube and you've got yourself about as high-concept of a film as you can get.
I had low expectations going into the film from the trailer, which looked creepy but not particularly original. So, hats off to young pups James Wan and Leigh Wannell for pulling this off with a nice brand of nasty verve.
To go into the story would be to spoil the grungy, gory fun of the whole affair. The movie is about the story, there is little subtext other than the multiple meanings of the title and puzzle of who the killer actually is. The killer wants his victims to appreciate their own life (one gets the feeling that he spies on them for a while and find them taking things for granted), so he gives them Prisoner Dilemmas of the most gruesome type.
Saw doesn't revolutionize or reinvent the genre, but is a solid entry that makes very few missteps.