It’s late fall, in case anyone didn’t notice. With fall comes many different things: beautifully colored trees, cooler weather, football and crappy horror movies.

Although a few horror films have already been released this fall, the majority of them seem to be less horror and more action, comedy or romance. Well, maybe not romance … but there must be a market for romantic-horror films.

Things looked to change with the release of “Saw.” Early trailers for the film left audiences guessing at what it was about. Amid dark and creepy images were shots of some strange clown thing that one would assume liked sawing other things. Despite the vague trailers, it seemed like a bloodbath of a horror film was on its way.

In his directorial debut, James Wan tells the story of two men who wake up to find they are chained up on opposite ends of a filthy bathroom. Adam (Leigh Whannell, “The Matrix Reloaded”) joins Dr. Lawrence Gordon (Cary Elwes, “Ella Enchanted”), as they attempt to figure out why and how they came to be in their predicament.

They soon find that they’ve been kidnapped and placed in this room for the amusement of a serial “killer,” nicknamed Jigsaw. I say “killer” because Jiggy never actually kills anyone. He simply puts them into a situation in which they must either do what he wants or they’ll die. Sort of like P Diddy, when you think of it that way. Adam is only told that “there are ways to win this game,” whereas Dr. Gordon is given the alternative of either killing Adam or allowing his entire family to be executed.

As the story progresses, Adam and Dr. Gordon realize that they have closer connections than they originally thought. They start working together in an effort to outwit Jigsaw and rescue the Doctor’s family. There’s one problem, though … they’re chained to the walls with seemingly no escape outside of playing Jigsaw’s game.

As a sort of parallel plotline, the movie follows the actions of Detectives David Tapp (Danny Glover, “The Royal Tenenbaums”) and Steven Sing (Ken Leung, “Red Dragon”) as they try to find the Jigsaw killer. Flashbacks show Tapp and Sing investigating previous victims of Jigsaw. These other concoctions of a madman are actually pretty unique, with one featuring a sort of reverse bear trap that a woman has to get off of her head before it snaps her face open.

Frankly, these are some of the more interesting parts of “Saw,” as they get away from the boring drama between Adam and Dr. Gordon and show how twisted the Jigsaw killer really is. Eventually these two plots intertwine, and Tapp frantically tries to save Adam and Dr. Gordon, as well as Gordon’s family.

Strangely, the film isn’t the bloodbath it appeared to be. It falls more into the category of a psychological thriller than horror, seeming rather similar to a film like “Se7en.” The plot is a sort of journey into the psyche of a killer as well as the confusion of his victims.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t a few points that see Wan going for cheap scares. One scene sees Adam, an amateur photographer, walking around his dark apartment after Jigsaw cuts off his power. He is forced to use the flash on his camera to light rooms as he goes and eventually corners Jigsaw in his closet. It’s obvious that he’ll open the door and Jigsaw will come flying out as the flash goes off, but the old trick still works.

While not overly gory, “Saw” does have a few scenes that will have viewers closing their eyes. One cop gets a head-full of shotgun out of nowhere, and there is an amputation at some point in the film with nothing but a little handsaw. Without really showing much blood, Wan manages to still make anyone watching the film squirm during the latter of those two scenes.

Overall, the acting is pretty sub-par. Glover is the biggest name in the film, but he doesn’t even pull his own weight. Whannell (who also wrote the screenplay) is whiney and annoying, but not in a good way. Elwes starts off well, but when the going gets tough and his character tries to develop further, he drops the ball. None of the bad acting ruins the film, but a little more effort would’ve made “Saw” a must-see for sure.

Toward the end, everything is explained through a few huge plot twists. These are interesting but leave more plot holes than they resolve. Without ruining anything, I can say that cancer is the true hero in this film … I’ll just leave it at that.

Seriously though, what kind of a name is “Saw” for a movie? Couldn’t they go with “Two Dudes in a Room” or something? Saws don’t even play that big of a role in the film, outside of the scene earlier mentioned. The tagline for the film echoes the old Klondike Bar question by asking, “How much blood would you shed to stay alive?”

While “Saw” doesn’t deliver a lot of scares, it does keep viewers at the edge of their seats by cranking tension throughout. It has just enough gore to get the job done without dwelling too much on that aspect. Although it’s not the best horror film to come out in recent memory, it’s certainly the creepiest one to hit theaters this season.

Grade: A/B