‘Some things last forever’
Jack Goes Home is a 2016 American independent horror film written, produced and directed by Thomas Dekker (actor in Fear Clinic; Laid to Rest and sequel; A Nightmare on Elm Street [2010]) and starring Rory Culkin, Daveigh Chase, Britt Robertson, and Lin Shaye.
After his father is killed in a car crash, Jack (Rory Culkin) travels home to Colorado to help nurse his drug addicted mother (who was also injured in the crash) back to health.
Jack is cursed by his past, and it takes a dark sinister turn when he finds a message from his late father, containing a clue that leads him on a mind bending scavenger hunt. There he uncovers long buried secrets and lies within his soul, family, history, his parents, his friends, and his very mind…
Reviews [may contain spoilers]:
“If Dekker scaled back the experiments with various horror tropes and polished the narrative, instead of rushing through it, this might have been something special. Instead we have a film that starts strong and spirals into an overcrowded nightmare. On some level it works; it just doesn’t make much sense.” Meagan Navarro, Modern Horrors
“Dekker chooses to hit you over the head repeatedly with all of his themes of depravity, sexual abuse and depression. In his hands, it’s all handled rather clumsily. This may be the intent since it is supposed to be a journey into the mind of a mentally disturbed man, but it doesn’t feel intentional and the film grows tedious quickly.” Trace Thurman, Bloody Disgusting
“Mr. Culkin has a quiet, wide-eyed gravity befitting his character, and the cinematography, by Austin F. Schmidt, strikes the proper mood. But the script, by Mr. Dekker, spirals into a muddle of ambiguity, leaving only the imagery and the performances to save the movie. And try as they might, they cannot.” Andy Webster, The New York Times
“…Jack Goes Home bores straight into our own individual discomfort zones, revealing the movie as an effective exercise in cerebral disturbance, not straightforward shock. See past the Shyamalan curveball, which drops in the dirt anyway, to contemplate subtext and Jack Goes Home is a thoughtful thriller settling inside you perhaps without realizing it.” Ian Sedensky, Culture Crypt
“The problem with Jack Goes Home is that it consists of odd pieces of character observation on the sidelines and a certain mystery that develops halfway through about what happened in Rory Culkin’s past but nothing that ever coalesces into much of a plot. The characters and Rory Culkin’s curiously blank performance have a weirdness.” Richard Scheib, Moria
“With difficult to relate to characters and a downbeat mood, Jack Goes Home can seem a bit like style over substance, a pretentious mind-fuck that Jack himself would praise, then tell you you won’t get it. But I don’t believe that’s the case. I’d rather have a lot of story than none at all.” Elliott Maguire, UK Horror Scene
“A slow-burn indie character drama, showcasing an impressive performance from Rory Culkin, this shades into psycho-horror territory – it even has what seems to be a zombie attack near the end – and gets detoured by a tangle of backstory revelations and twists that feel a little second-hand. Suppressed memories of child abuse and characters who turn out to be not really there have been overdone in 21st century psycho drama…’ The Kim Newman Web Site
“Dekker has the right idea in terms of building some scares, but none of it is all that imaginative. Tonally, he’s all over the place, seemingly tossing anything at the screen in hopes something will connect, and while sometimes that works, mostly it just feels forced. There is nothing we haven’t seen before, even if the right buttons are pushed.” David Duprey, That Moment In
“Dekker’s combination of Eugene O’Neill and The Shining ultimately proves too unwieldy, especially when the secrets start raining down hard in the final half-hour. Still, kudos to him for making a movie that risks being unpleasant. If nothing else, Jack Goes Home effectively imagines family dysfunction as a demon that can’t be exorcised.” Noel Murray, Los Angeles Times
“Some will dig this kinetic bout of blistering genre toxicity, while others will be let down by an ending that offers no pretty bows or sense of direction. Jack Goes Home is a swirling storm of emotional ravaging that’s eventually personified by action, but it never comes together as wicked, cohesive storytelling.” Matt Donato, We Got This Covered
” …Jack Goes Home suggests the fever-pitched outlandishness of 1970s horror films like Alice, Sweet Alice and The Baby, but more often Dekker resorts to talky, rhythm-less dialogue scenes filmed in bland, undifferentiated close-ups. This under-directed muddle is punctuated by over-directed dream sequences and scare scenes…” Keith Watson, Slant magazine
“On top of being unusual, it’s also extremely bleak; lacking any significant levity to counteract the darkness of the film’s subject matter. But if you have the mindset for it, there’s a lot to admire here. Even if it’s not especially satisfying, it’ll be sure to stick with you for quite some time—and isn’t that a notable feat?” Blair Hoyle, Cinema Slasher
Cast and characters:
- Rory Culkin … Jack – Lords of Chaos; Welcome to Willits; Scream 4; Signs
- Daveigh Chase … Shanda
- Britt Robertson … Cleo
- Lin Shaye … Teresa – The Black Room; The Midnight Man; Insidious franchise; et al
- Nikki Reed … Crystal
- Natasha Lyonne … Nancy
- Louis Hunter … Duncan
- Serge Levin … Sven
Release:
Jack Goes Home premiered at the South by Southwest international film festival (SXSW) on March 14, 2016, and was theatrically released by Momentum Pictures on October 14, 2016.
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