Saw VI promises to spread Jigsaw’s lessons, as if five previous movies haven’t already done that, but we won’t know how until we see it. With a new Saw every year, Tobin Bell has gotten good at giving interviews as cryptic as his character’s clues. Our one on one interview was a look back at Jigsaw’s philosophical significance, in Bell’s trademark calm, articulate voice. 

Crave Online: What lessons does Jigsaw still have to teach?

Tobin Bell: That’s a good question. He has a lot of lessons to teach. We just have to get them in the text.

Crave Online: I love the idea that it’s spreading. How does it go beyond one person carrying on his legacy?

Tobin Bell: Obviously we started in a very small world, that one room, the bathroom. I have always felt that the story needed to expand and the question I have always asked is what’s going on here? That is the part of the puzzle that I am most interested in. I am hoping that first of all, you get more pieces of the puzzle in Saw VI with some amazing special effects and wonderful traps, if you can call them wonderful.

Crave Online: I do actually. Those are amazing contraptions with quite profound ramifications.

Tobin Bell: Oh good. I’m glad to hear that. I’ve finally learned that horror fans are a breed apart and what some middle of the road Americans might not consider wonderful, horror fans first of all don’t take that seriously particularly. I’ve been interested to learn that people that go to these films, the people that actually go take them less seriously than the people who don’t go. The people who don’t go have these incredibly strong opinions and thoughts about the genre.

Crave Online: The most respectful audiences I’ve been in have been Saw audience. Someone was mouthing off in Saw IV and they shushed him up because they wanted to pay attention to the story.

Tobin Bell: Oh, good, good. I’ve actually only sat in one theater. Twice, but I remember sitting in Saw I, sitting in the back row of Saw I over in Westwood or something like that. The moment when I got up off the floor, people visibly rose out of their seats and gasped as one which I was just amazed by that. So that kind of experience, if you can make people physically react, recoil, that’s pretty intense, pretty amazing.

Crave Online: Do you think if John Kramer’s baby had lived, do you think he would not have become Jigsaw?

Tobin Bell: The child and the fate of the child and the cause of the way the events piled up toward that result I think is the key factor in the transition from being a hopeful member of society and a successful engineer, John Kramer becoming what the police and the press call Jigsaw. Did you know that Gideon, which was his son’s name, means mighty warrior in ancient Hebrew? Gideon’s loss of the opportunity to become that, I suspect that John Kramer metamorphosed into that role in some way. We haven’t covered that yet but just talking to you, Fred, about that.