50 God-Tier Acting Moments Buried in Bad Movies

The Saw movies have been thoroughly inconsistent over the years, yet there has been one constant positive throughout all of them: Tobin Bell's stunning performance as John Kramer, the demented Jigsaw Killer. 

Sadly, Bell's career hasn't really taken off outside of the Saw movies, and his performance as Jigsaw shows that he's been an underutilized talent over the years. As one of horror cinema's greatest killers, Bell is able to quietly command every single scene as Jigsaw, giving a subtle, haunting, and spiritually broken turn as the terminally ill psychopath. He's terrifying yet sympathetic at the same time, just like many of the best movie villains are. 

Even in the worst Saw films, Bell has been consistently strong. A fine example of this comes from arguably the worst Saw film to date, 2005's execrable Saw V. In this scene, Jigsaw first meets his future apprentice Mark Hoffman (Costas Mandylor), who'd murdered his sister's killer in a Jigsaw-style trap. 

Thanks to Tobin Bell's stellar work, this is one of the only worthwhile scenes in the movie. Even though Mandylor's performance is fairly wooden (as it was throughout all of the Saw sequels), Bell's work single-handedly elevates this scene to greatness, and he's just as sinister, intimidating, and curiously likable as he always was.