大象传媒

With its distinctive moniker and torture-porn aesthetic, it's obvious which films inspired W螖Z (hello . Or is it ? Try reading the title backwards...). Set in New York but shot as much in Belfast as Brooklyn, this British production is a curious attempt to out-Hollywood Hollywood with a disturbing story about two cops (Stellan Skarsgard and Melissa George) hunting a sadistic serial killer. "There will be pain," threatens the villain before hammering nails under people's fingernails. Those with weak stomachs should stop reading now...

The first victim is a pregnant gangbanger who's found burnt and electrocuted with the word "W螖Z" knifed into her flesh. "If you carve something into the belly of a dead woman, it ain't her you want to read it," growls Skarsgard's quarry-throated cop as he wades through Brooklyn's crackhouses and graffiti-daubed tenement buildings. As the case unfolds, he realises that the serial killer is versed in genetics and evolutionary biology and is trying to make a serious point by killing some of the neighbourhood's most vicious predators.

"LEFTOVERS FROM DR CRIPPEN'S SCRAPBOOK"

Although he struggles to make the British-feeling production convince, UK helmer Tom Shankland gets the faux-Fincher nihilism just right (the producers of the Saw series could do worse than tap him for Saw V). It's smarter and darker than Jigsaw's efforts, though, delivering all the usual grubby torture-porn goods (glossy police department photos of victims' corpses look like leftovers from Dr Crippen's scrapbook) as well as a cleverly sordid twist that few are likely to see coming. Aussie actress Melissa George - a blonde deadringer for Angelina Jolie - is promising in the underwritten rookie role but it's really not her story. Instead, Scandinavian Skarsgard sinks his teeth into his flawed and misguided detective, a man who's as morally repugnant as those he hunts.

W螖Z is out in the UK on 22nd February 2008.