Saw

The clever debut of director James Wan and screenwriter/star Leigh Whannell plays like the bastard child of "Seven" and "The Usual Suspects," where a psychopathic genius with a messianic ego unleashes his sadistic torments in a shadow world of fog and gloom inhabited by an almost uniformly "guilty" cast (including Cary Elwes and Danny Glover). The eccentric and brazenly jaundiced psycho-thriller "Saw" was a low-budget sensation and quickly spawned its own franchise. "Saw II," written by first-time feature director Darren Lynn Bousman with Whannell, brings back the clockwork sadist (Tobin Bell) and the sole survivor of his games (Shawnee Smith) for a second go-round, this one in a house filled with booby traps, taunting clues and hidden antidotes to the spreading fog of nerve gas. Third time's a charm, so Bousman reteams with Bell and Smith for a session of extreme couples therapy with Angus Macfadyen and Bahar Soomekh in "Saw III," which debuts this week in a new two-disc director's cut special edition. It's available both in a separate release and in the "Saw" trilogy box set, which packages all three two-disc collections in a standard case. It's the 3-D mask of the slip-sleeve that fills out the package. But remember: It's only a trilogy until the fourth installment comes out this week.