Jack in the Box

It's not gory. It's not fast-paced. It's not fancy.

They clearly spent all the budget on the box and Jack - which are nice and convincing. But they obviously hired their cousin with a DSLR to shoot it. It is recorded with ambient light and sound. So it just looks and sounds flat. That seems to be the standard nowadays in these dime-a-dozen pre-professional horror movies. So if you are looking for stimulating atmosphere, there is an echo-y, brightly sunlit, nearly empty local historical society "museum" at the center of the film.

It is also very understated in a British way. The lead actor will wind up going on to better things. He is charmingly handsome; and it is only up for him from here. He just had a peculiarly muted accent. Most of the other cast was staid and just there.

The movie had some interesting ideas. A decent protagonist. A very well-designed villain. But horror-oriented plot, suspense and execution - not so much.

A low budget but enjoyable horror. The main character is a good actor and the jack in the box wasn't exactly scary but was entertaining.

Why is it that so many low budget British horror films feel it necessary to have at least one American amongst the lead cast but don't employ an American actor or an actor that can do a convincing American accent? The main character here is Casey, played by Ethan Taylor, meant to be American but judging by his laughable accent he obviously isn't. I have marked this down as this is a pet hate of mine. Bad accent aside the Jack in question is reasonably creepy and there are a few half decent scares. Sadly the pace between kills is slow, some of the acting is of the wooden variety and the plot is predictable.

I had not even heard about this 2019 movie when I was given the chance to sit down to watch it here in 2020. But from the movie's cover, this most definitely was a horror movie, and that was what lured me in.

Well, for a horror movie, then "The Jack in the Box" was bland and rather generic. Sure, it was a watchable movie, but writer and director Lawrence Fowler just never managed to bring the movie out of the mediocre lane.

The storyline in "The Jack in the Box" was pretty straight forward, albeit very, very generic. And it was contents that you have seen in other previous horror movies many times before; a demonic entity being caged up inside a physical box, unleashed unto the world unwittingly by someone not knowing what powers they were meddling with. From that point on, the movie was just overly predictable and followed a very generic how-to-make-a-horror movie blueprint, which left very little room for surprises and plot twists, apparently, because there were none of such in the entire movie.

I will say, however, that the demonic Jack in the Box was actually nicely made and had a good, scary appearance. But it was just a bit under-used and didn't come off as being malignant and evil enough. It felt more like just a creepy uncle creeping around in a clown costume. So writer Lawrence Fowler didn't really manage to create something that was all that spooky or disturbing.

The acting in "The Jack in the Box" was adequate, but it was clear that the actors and actresses had precious little contents to work with in terms of script and character development.

All in all, "The Jack in the Box" was a watchable movie, but it was hardly an outstanding or scary horror movie. My rating of "The Jack in the Box" is a four out of ten stars. Watch it if you have the chance and if you have a preference for horror movies, but just don't get your hopes up for a horror masterpiece. This is, however, the type of movie that you watch once, shelf it and never return to watch it again.

Jack kept me in this, even though the story made no sense!