Basement Jack

Being a slasher movie fan, I was thinking, well, it can't be all that bad. I mean, even the worst films have some good thing about them.

Let me tell you right now.

THIS ONE HAS NONE!

The movie is just terrible, and the worst part is that they took it seriously. Acting is truly bad. Even for a slasher movie... At most points the stabbing scenes are made badly and you can see how they miss the person. Even at a moment when a person is stabbed through, falls to the floor and then... No blood on their back when the knife just came out.

If you are thinking about watching this movie, I can only tell you one thing: DON'T!

There is a whole list of things you can do instead that are much more entertaining: - Starring a white wall for a couple of hours - Counting Flakes in you cornflake box - Going to sleep

and much much more.

Basement Jack was tortured by his mother growing up before he kills her and goes on a killing spree murdering family's during storms. He is released and the murders start up again. Yeah this is low budget but you can really tell the director tried with this. It was shot well and it had some good gore. All the acting is pretty terrible bar the main girl and weird choices were made like having a British speaking police officer in a small American town. It tried a little too hard in parts with some humor like the porn watching scene at the police station but the killer was suitably creepy and the gore was good for the budget they had.

I watched Basement Jack on a friends recommendation and it has some classic shots from a director who is clearly influenced by western flicks. Combined with Alan Howarth's score, you've got a low budget movie that frequently outshines it's funding. I see a few reviews here panning the movie, and while it's not Gone with the Wind, the shot selection, score, and strong performances from star Michele Morrow as well as several supporting cast give a flawed script it's fair share of very satisfying moments.

Michele Morrow (hottie alert) turns out a visceral performance as outlaw/hero Karen Cook, and while i understand the many "Sarah Connor" comparisons, i sense more of Sigourney Weaver's "Ripley" in her smoldering delivery. Lynn Lowry delivers another chillingly unhinged performance and Nathan Bexton as the manager is extremely fun to watch.

I was a little surprised to learn "Basement Jack" is director Michael Shelton's first turn at the helm, as he's delivered a solid film from start to finish - looking forward to seeing what he does next.

Young man is tortured with a 9 volt battery by mother as a kid and turns into a killer only during thunderstorms.

If you buy into that premise, you might also like the bad acting, horrible script, the dead victims whose eyes are literally blinking and moving on screen, and storms without rain.

I didn't.

Characters actions simply don't make sense. Not sure if you've ever licked a 9 volt battery. I have. It doesn't hurt in the slightest. You feel a dull tingle. That's how we'd test to see if they were good as kids. None of us turned into serial killers.

And why do so many of the corpses move when they're supposed to be dead?

Didn't anyone see this during the editing?

IMDD says this movie had a million dollar budget.

Where did the money go?

BASEMENT JACK is another cheap slasher movie, an independent straight-to-DVD effort that looks and feels exactly the same as at least a dozen others. It has the old greyed-out colour palette look going on, alongside a non-threatening villain, lots of cheap gore effects, and a strictly pedestrian narrative.

The titular character is a psychotic who choses bad weather as a time to go around menacing innocent families. There are a lot of scenes shot in rooms filled with blood sprayed over the walls and the like, but the emphasis is on graphic kill sequences as Jack goes around slaughtering all in his path.

He's an irredeemable villain, but the kills have zero impact because there's no characterisation here whatsoever. There is some talk in an attempt to build a proper story, but none of it is very interesting. The best cast member they could come up with is Tiffany Shepis, who started out as a Troma starlet. I found BASEMENT JACK tired and distasteful, and I couldn't help wondering why I was bothering to watch it.