TM & © 2007 HPE Rights, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Not for sale or duplication. Photo by James Bridges. Kevin Bacon as “Nick Hume” in Death Sentence.

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It’s an honest mistake. After all, director James Wan is the man who kick-started the Saw franchise and then reminded us (as if we needed it) how utterly terrifying ventriloquist dummies are in Dead Silence — so you can forgive us for expecting his latest, Death Sentence, to involve handsaws, displaced limbs or, at least, a menacing puppet or two.

“Coming off two straight horror films, I really wanted to branch out and do something a little bit different,” says Wan, an energetic and exceedingly friendly man without a hint of gothic Sturm or Drang. “And I felt Death Sentence would be kind of a natural segue for me.”

Based on the novel of the same name, Death Sentence is about a man whose son is murdered in a random act of violence, and who then dedicates his life to seeking the justice denied him by the legal system. It may not be “boo!” worthy, but it is definitely harrowing and, to paraphrase Saw’s Jigsaw, oh yes, there is blood: “Even though this is not a horror film, I found it to be a lot scarier because it deals with the real world,” Wan explains. “It’s about one man spiraling out of control and taking the law into his own hands and realizing that vengeance is a scary thing. It can cut both ways.”

This downward spiral is in the hands of Kevin Bacon, who plays the suburban family man–turned–death-obsessed vigilante Nick Hume. For Bacon, Death Sentence became a chance to flex his muscles a bit. “I had floated it out there that I wanted to do something physical,” Bacon says. “I think my direct words were, ‘I want to kick a little ass.’”

Although Bacon was drawn to Hume’s eventual transformation, Wan was more concerned with his star’s ability to get the first act right. “I really needed an actor who had the ability to play an everyday man, a normal suburban father, and then through the course of the film, transform into something the opposite of that,” Wan says.  “And Kevin has played good guys and bad guys in equal measure, so I felt he was right for the role. And he proved it. He comes across like a real everyday guy, but there always seems to be this thing simmering below the surface. A darkness brooding underneath.”