The House that Jack Built (2018)

The Plot of The House That Jack Built: Jack, known in the press as the serial killer Mr Sophistication, narrates his crimes apparently the Verge his guide to hell. They are presented as INCIDENTS, starting with an irritating woman who wants help with her car who he kills with her car jack. In the second incident he kills a woman while pretending to be some sort of a salesman, but is required to elude the police. And there are further incidents with Jack carrying out unpleasant killings and him taking the dead people to a commercial freezer he owns. At intervals he attempts to build a house, but becomes fed up with it and has the partially completed structures bulldozed.  There are also flashbacks to Jack’s childhood where he is seen to cut a leg off a duckling. But we should bear in mind that Jack is on his way to hell.

Content: There is a bit of female nudity, which includes Jack marking dotted lines round his girlfriend’s breasts, but no sex. In addition to the actual murders which are unpleasant Jack describes how he comes to need to carry out further murders by showing us a cartoon of a figure walking between street lights. He also stands next to his van with cards which he displays and throws down. The killings are all bizarre in different ways. After the second he keeps having to return to the house to clean up imagined blood. He kills a woman and her sons with a hunting rifle using guidance on how to kill families of deer. The freezer he uses has an internal door, which he finally has to open to align his rifle on the heads of six tied down men. This may be symbolic. Finally there is the descent into hell. This film would be unsuitable viewing for young people.

A View:  My wife and I have seen a number of Lars von Trier films but even so this outing came as a bit of a shock. Amid the thoughtless ( no – actually thoughtful) brutality there is a strand of humour. So once we had got over the shock of Uma Thurman’s character being killed with a car jack, we more or less got the hang of it and, grim though it was, managed to hang on to the end. There are a number of possible interpretations of the film, or at least the end, one being that the whole thing is in Jack’s imagination. Others suggest that the second compartment of the freezer represents Jack’s conscience. It is interesting, but a difficult watch. If you’ve read this you know what to expect.

Fun Fact: When the film as shown at Cannes 100 people walked out during the presentation.