The Most Controversial Film of 2018 Is Also The Funniest
It's also a sadistic art house horror movie!
I never thought I'd say I love a Lars von Trier film, but hey, here we are.
Lars von Trier is still a glorious piece of shit, but this is not just his most self realized film, but perhaps his best (if not his funniest).
In what might be Lars von Trier’s most mainstream yet controversial film; Shot like a cheap, handi-cam B movie horror flick, The House That Jack Built is the antithesis to the usual Lars antidote of grandiose art house pictures that hipster cinephiles clamor to (though the man’s self indulgence is still throbbing beyond any of our control).
For those keeping track, von Trier is an obnoxiously pretentious filmmaker who inevitably has a rigorous eye for cinema. With mesmerizing schlock like Melancholia, Antichrist and Nymphomaniac vol. I & II (get the fuck out here with your Roman numerals) the man THRIVES on being colorful and controversial.
ERGO, by having his cult following while being no stranger to pushing audience thresholds, it wasn’t a shock that during a screening of The House That Jack Built at Cannes film festival this year, over a hundred people walked out, while the film also received a ten-minute standing ovation.
(No, but really.)
In this desensitized age of gratuitous content in media, the buzz around the infamous Cannes walk out is no doubt more intriguing than the film itself, especially considering von Trier is bringing his controversy to the horror genre, with content deemed so graphic the MPAA demanded the film be trimmed to an R-rating before hitting select theaters this winter (for the gore hounds, director’s cut is apparently to drop next summer).
So what could be SO BAD that it caused ONE-HUNDRED PEOPLE to walk out during the middle of a festival screening?
*Checks notes*
Ah, ok. It’s a scene containing violence against children, for those curious (To go any further would spoil things).
And listen, not to write off crimes against children on screen as something that ISN'T bothersome, but any diehard horror movie fan will find the graphic content in Jack tame compared to the shit like A Serbian Film, or whatever flick that sick bastards dare their friends to watch due to an unholy pushing of boundaries.
If anything the controversy behind Jack’s graphic content should appeal horror fans because House That Jack Built is like a straight up cross between Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer and American Psycho. It’s a deep dive into the psyche of a maniac with OCD, but it’s also kinda really funny.
That’s right folks, the biggest surprise of Jack is not in its disturbing content rather than in its humor.
(REALLY depends on your sense of humor though...)
Granted the film is certainly twisted and not for the faint of heart (what Lars film is?), von Trier’s deep dive into the demented makes for not just a unique horror film, but also one of the best dark comedies of 2018. No joke. Matt Dillon holds down a deadpan performance that literally dares audiences not to laugh out loud on MULTIPLE occasions throughout the film.
Amidst some of the film’s laughs, von Trier leaves no victim able to escape his torture. But if the threshold for violence against women, children, animals, and everybody in between can be sustained, there is some actually excellent dark takeaway from the film and that’s something I never thought I’d say about something as ugly and mean spirited as Jack, but more something to be said about a von Trier film, and the key to his latest film is the self commentary on the whole damn thing.
Even the marketing is incredibly self indulgent, if not just plain cryptic.
By splitting up the film into Jack’s five cases that helped build who he is as a killer, von Trier is crafting something of an anthology film, with each case crossing different forms of horror and even spilling into sub-genres (the “2nd Case” segment is one of the funniest pieces of black humor in all of 2018). With Jack’s hilariously tormented OCD, von Trier is not only finding his funny bone, but he’s finally unafraid to open up and kinda make fun of himself.
All of Jack’s cases are dubbed, juxtaposed and eventually epilogued by a heavy narration of confession between the killer himself and a man who can only be described as a priest figure. Their conversations while philosophical, historical, metaphorical, are also incredibly self indulgent as much of the dialogue is von Trier stroking his entire ego for better or worse.
Towards the third act there’s a breakdown of metaphors in deconstructing a house representing the mutilation of one’s self and what it means to be dark, yada yada yada, and to provide example there are LITERALLY snippets of von Trier’s OWN FILMS.
If anything Jack is a self aware statement of Lars being meta about not just trying to kill and destroy things in order to make sense of the world, but also to deconstruct his entire career.
And let's be honest, it's about time the dude got a little self reflective.
The whole thing is filled with all kinds of metaphorical comparisons that are debatably pretentious but the REAL division will come from the apocalyptic ending that will deem Jack perhaps the most polarizing film since Darren Aronovsky’s Mother!
Yeah, it’s easy to see why folks will absolutely loathe this movie.
To everyone else, this will earn its cult following perhaps more than any von Trier film to date.
Also, it heavily features David Bowie’s ‘Fame’ and Bowie’s never a bad thing.
*100 points to Bowie
*10 points to Matt Dillon
*25 points to Lars
(Didn’t think I’d be giving ANY points to Lars)
