An outsider mentality

Two guys in a grimy, fluorescent-lit bathroom -- chained, bewildered, staring at a dead body between them -- is how the gruesome new horror film “Saw” opens. Two guys in a clean, sunlit hotel restaurant in West Hollywood is how a press tour for “Saw” begins to wind down.

But that fear of the unknown that hangs over the hapless duo on screen could just as easily describe the skittishness coming from “Saw” director James Wan and the film’s screenwriter and costar Leigh Whannell. These affable 27-year-old Australians have watched their twisted little script about a trap-setting serial killer take them from obscurity to a full-court American release on more than 2,200 screens in time for Halloween.

But of multiplex reaction, they actually seem ... scared.

Though they’ve taken a $1-million budget and stretched its limitations with name actors -- Danny Glover, Cary Elwes and Monica Potter -- and flashy direction, at heart they feel that being bear-hugged by the hard-core horror community, which has been hyping “Saw” since its midnight premiere at Sundance, is reward enough.

“This was always supposed to be for a very small niche market,” explains Wan, who offsets a small, thin frame with a booming, friendly voice. Whannell, meanwhile, openly dreads the response from mainstream critics.

“We’re just two goofy kids from halfway around the world. Lions Gate is treating it like ‘Lord of the ... Rings,’ which is great, but maybe we should have handed cards out at press screenings saying, ‘The people who made this are not intelligent. Cut it some slack.’ ”

Does this mean they envisioned “Saw” as a straight-to-DVD blip circulated among fright film aficionados? Says Whannell, “We were thinking more we’d be showing it to our friends” -- he gestures to an imaginary TV set and widens his eyes in geek-like excitement -- “and going, ‘What do you think?’ ”

Wan roars with laughter, adding, “DVD was too high up for us!”

“Saw” is certainly bloody, but they insist they’re not “gore hounds.” They feel it’s more about what’s implied.

Nevertheless, the Motion Picture Assn. of America needed some trims before “Saw” could get an R rating.

Even though their tastes run from Jean Cocteau to David Lynch to the operatically bloody Italian director Dario Argento, they didn’t want “Saw” to be inaccessible. “We wanted to take all this weirdness from people like Lynch and Argento but actually have a story line that you could follow,” says Wan, who shot the film in Los Angeles last year in 18 days.

Both Wan and Whannell are engaging conversationalists on horror’s tactical intricacies. They are hilariously specific on what’s frightening about Ruth Gordon’s elderly neighbor in “Rosemary’s Baby.” (It’s the way she’s never overtly menacing, how she’ll slyly torment Mia Farrow with a chirpy “Whatcha doin’?”)

And they decry fake movie shocks. “My favorite is the friend banging on the car window,” says Whannell. “When they frame a shot where a person is to the left and you’ve got all this empty frame, you know someone’s going to fill that in a second. And anytime anyone opens a mirror cabinet, who’s going to be there when they shut it?”

They speak passionately about culty gems that one or the other will unearth in a video store. Whannell praises a Beverly Hills-set carnage-fest from 1989 called “Society” about the rich really feeding off the poor, while Wan points to “Monster Man,” about a menacing truck.

That pick isn’t surprising considering Steven Spielberg’s legendary suspense film about an evil diesel rig, “Duel,” is Wan’s favorite movie. In fact, Wan and Whannell first bonded over Spielberg when they were Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology students -- where a passion for Spielberg threatened any potential hipster status.

“Too commercial,” explains Wan. “It was like a dirty secret,” says “Jaws” fanatic Whannell. “Trading copies of ‘Duel’ in the dark. ‘You have that copy of “ET”?’ “ ‘Yes. The pigeon lands at midnight.’ ”

Although they’re encouraged by the seriousness that directors M. Night Shyamalan and Danny Boyle have shown for the horror genre, they wonder why more high-profile filmmakers won’t try it.

“It’s almost like the horror film is the one you get out of the way at the start of your career so you can move on to respectable genres that get you an Oscar,” says Whannell. And although they have ideas about romantic comedies and children’s films, the script they just gave Universal is another chiller, this time about ventriloquist dummies.

It seems Wan has a thing for unsettling dolls, since a garish papier-mache figure cuts a disturbing presence in “Saw.” Whannell envisions a slippery slope: “I’m sure a creepy clown doll will work its way into James’ romantic comedy.”