Jackals

A family employ a former Marine to kidnap and help reverse the brainwashing that their one son has under gone when he joined a dark and dangerous evil cult. The members want him back and lay siege to the family's isolated house. Jackals has a very basic plot but that does not matter, this movie is an exercise in terror and suspense, of violence and darkness. It is well acted and shot, the location gives a real feel of isolation and helplessness. The cult members, all dressed in leather and wearing creepy animal style masks, look terrifying. The movie is set several decades before it was made, I don't know why - perhaps it was to eliminate the ability of any body trapped inside the family home to use their cell 'phone and call for help? (needless to say the landline had been cut off). Overall a pretty decent 85 minutes, better than The Strangers.

Just another knockoff of The Strangers. In fact, this director worked on that movie, so I guess that's where he got the idea. The bad guys here have slightly more motive than in The Strangers, they're attacking this house to get one of their members back, but beyond that we know absolutely nothing about them or their motives, only that they're another group of mysterious masked people who like to arbitrarily torture and murder anyone in their way.

It's not a terrible movie, but it doesn't really do anything new or interesting either. It's watchable, but completely unmemorable. Don't expect any form of satisfaction from the ending either.

One more thing. Why did they bother to make this set in the early 80's? It seemed to have no bearing at all on the plot or characters and if it wasn't for the old style TV and picture of Ronald Reagan on a mantle that they show for a few seconds in the beginning, you'd never know this was supposed to be happening in the 80's. There's no 80's feel to anything in the movie. Somehow I suspect that they did this for the sole purpose of creating an excuse for no one to have a phone...

Kevin Greutert, the editor behind Saw (2004) and later directed two entries of that particular franchise is back with a new horror. Immediately you think this would or could be the next Saw but it isn't.

It stands on it's own, no open ending at all. The story is simple, save your child from a cult only to be terrorised from that cult to get the son back. Is it that bad as some might say. Well, it takes a while before things go wrong, to be exactly 38 minutes before the terror comes in and that's almost half the flick (10 minutes credits). Once the cult is back the attacks shown aren't that bad done anyway. There are even a few gory shots here and there but for me there wasn't anything scary at all or the cult even didn't frighten me. They do wear masks but they are just standing there and some do attack and kill or being killed and that's it.

I found Don't Breathe (2017) more scary and a pure horror for example. here it's also about home invasion but somehow it didn't work out to make it creepy at all. Still, for those who like torture and brutality it's worth picking up to see the nastiness of the torture or killings.

Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2/5 Comedy 0/5

Saw this recently on a blu-ray. Had seen the trailer n the concept of cult group n the theme of home invasion piqued my interest. Of course Kevin Greutert's name was the other good factor. The guy being an editor himself knows how to control his film's pacing and how to build suspense. Most people r comparing it to The Strangers (2008) but if u read the trivia section, the script of this film was written in 2006. The other thing is Greutert was the editor for The Strangers but the real fact is The Strangers itself was a copy of the far superior French film Them aka Ils (2006). Coming back to this film, the director managed to start the film well with the initial home invasion murders a la Halloween style n then cut back to the van kidnapping scene n the cabin in the middle of nowhere. The settings n era were good too. The 80's era was obviously to show the lack of mobile phones n a reference to the Charles Manson cult group. The mask-wearing villains were creepy, Stephen Dorff's role was very small. I really wanted some showdown between him n the villains. Some viewers may complain that it would hav been better for the family to leave the cultist son but if u notice the start scene, the cultist person do come back to slaughter his family.

A cult demands the return of their member after his family kidnaps him. My only problem is that about halfway through the family should have cut their losses. The returns diminish ridiculously after that. However, it is a given that people act stupidly in a horror movie. If you can't get behind that most fundamental of horror movie tropes then don't bother. And voila, we have the scenario where I can dig the hell out of this movie even with that big of a beef. I love the evil that flourishes throughout the cult, down to the kidnapped son. I love the high tension all the way through. I do hate the women, especially the young mother but I think the writer has a bias there.