THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT (2018)

A lot of people walked out of THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT when it premiered. Does it live up to the hype (if you can even call it that)? Kind of. The violence is very graphic, but clips of the death scenes are re-shown a couple of times (whenever the title character (a serial killer) remembers them). For some viewers, that feels like overkill; for other viewers (like me), that removes the shock and helps us get used to the imagery. Well, at least with the drawn-out deaths. The repetition of the quick and painless ones unintentionally makes them comical. The movie works whenever JACK talks to his future victims. The suspense is palpable and Matt Dillon commands the screen. Unfortunately, there are interludes that last several minutes where JACK talks to a man named VERGE (we don't know who he is until the last part) about different kinds of topics. They speak in voice-over while still images and stock footage are shown. That's right: Writer/Director Lars von Trier expected us to buy tickets and see a glorified video essay on a big screen... and I fell for it! What's worse is that they're not even necessary for the audience to get to know JACK, since he has enough pre-murder monologues about his world views. It's one thing to use a hand-held camera to make a movie feel more realistic, but why choose certain movements and zooms that make the image temporarily blurry? When we see it getting back in focus, it takes us out of the movie. During the final 10 minutes or so, the movie becomes a completely different one in terms of narrative, tone and visuals. Some shots are beautiful, others are too pretentious to admire, and others are plain silly.

5/10
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