THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT (2018) (Scream Factory Blu-ray Review)

THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT (2018) 

Label: Scream Factory
Region Code: A
Rating: R/Unrated
Duration: 151 & 153 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo & 5.1 Surround with Optional English Subtitles
Video: 1080p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Director: Lars Von Trier
Cast: Bruno Ganz, Matt Dillon, Uma Thurman, Riley Keough, Siobhan Fallon Hogan

Synopsis: In five audacious episodes, failed architect and arch-sociopath Jack (Matt Dillon) recounts the elaborately orchestrated murders — each, as he views them, as a towering work of art — that define his “career” as a serial killer. Mixing pitch-black humor, transcendent surrealism, and renegade musings on everything from history to architecture to cinema itself, von Trier fashions a radical, blazingly personal inquiry into violence, art, and the twin acts of creation and destruction. 

Director Lars Von Trier is no stranger to being a button-pusher, each of his films court controversy as reliably as most people breath air. His latest knee-jerker The Jack That House Built (2018) stars Matt Dillon (Drugstore Cowboy) as an OCD-afflicted serial killer named Jack, a demented murderer who fancies himself something of an artist. As the film plays along we experience Jack recalling several formative incidents in his life that establish him as a deranged serial killer,told in retrospect to a presence known as Verge (Bruno Ganz, The Boys From Brazil), whose role becomes more clear as the film plays along. Jack's story begin in the 70's with him picking up a stranded motorist (Uma Thurman, Kill Bill) who strangely berates his masculinity. He seems to struggle with what to do with her for a bit, before smashing her face in with a carjack. Afterward he takes her body to an warehouse district where he keeps an industrial sized walk-in freezer that he keeps his victims in.

The next story involves a widow (Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Funny Games) with Jack arriving on her doorstep posing as a cop at first, when he realizes she's not buying it he turns on a dime, changing his story to that of someone who can increase the payout of her deceased husband's pension. This is where I caught on this thing is a deeply black comedy, the first kill hinted at it, but the way he goes about making up the story trying to get invited into this woman's home was so absolutely ridiculous, and even sillier that she went along with it.

This is also the segment where we see his OCD kicks in, and I loved the way they visualize it, and how his compulsion slows him down, and in fact delays him to the point that a cop in the area on an unrelated calls end up questioning him, leading to a rather funny scene of him fleeing the victim's house with her corpse tied to the back of his van, leaving a miles long trail of blood behind him as the asphalt eats away at the body's face! This segment also sets up a weird sort of divination angle by way of a rainfall that washes away the evidence in a downpour. 

I won't go into all the stories, but I will go into in one more, with Jack taking a woman and her two young boys on a picnic into a remote area of forest. There he teaches them how to shoot a scoped rife, before shooting both of her children and then forcing her to feed one of their corpses pie, before going after her with the not-unexpected results. In the aftermath Jack takes the corpse of the older boy to his industrial freezer and contorts it's faces into a macabre smile that is supremely disturbing.

The film seems offers some sort of commentary on Von Trier's own controversial career with a mixed media presentation that uses both  animation and stock footage, in addition to clips from several of his own films. Throughout the film Jack and Verge discuss his deranged philosophy and macabre art, with Jack making the case for his kills to be works of art in themselves, with continued talk about his desire to build a house, but not finding the right raw materials, which is realized in the final leg of the film in a bizarre and grotesque way.

Eventually Jack's murder-spree becomes more brazen and unplanned, and the cops end up storming his industrial freezer, which this strange movie gets even stranger, with Jack visiting Hell with Verge leading the way! Matt Dillon is absolutely phenomenal in this film, it's is a strange and grotesque film, the way he plays the delightfully demented killer is fantastic. I applaud him for being game for all of this, at times coming across as a more violent - but not that much more unhinged - variation on his nutso Pat Healy character from the comedy There's Something About Mary.

While I didn't find the film scary it rather enthralling in it's repulsiveness, at one point Jack draws perforated lines with a red sharpie around the breasts of a young woman before hacking them off, leaving a fleshy chunk of breast on the windshield of a cop car. It's nasty stuff, but there's an element of dark humor throughout that while not exactly softening the blow, renders it a bit less shocking to me, but still entertaining and disturbing. I also dig how they go back to his childhood and show the early on-set violence he commits against small animals that hint at the larger more horrific things to come - in this case the torture and mutilation of a duckling, which for many viewers might be the most reprehensible image in the entire film. 

Audio/Video: Both the R-rated and unrated version of The House That Jack Built (2018) arrive on Blu-ray from Scream Factory framed in 2.35:1 widescreen in 1080p HD. The digitally shot films looks excellent, everything crisp and well-defined with good clarity, colors looks natural and the blacks are deep throughout. The disc's English DTS-HD MA 2.0 and 5.1 audio options are both solid, dialogue and sounds effects are crisp and clean sounding, the score and soundtrack selections sound great, and the Bruno Ganz character's voice over narration has a wonderful disembodied quality, particularly in the surround mix. 

Extras on the disc include a 27- min interview with the director by Peter Schepelerz, a 1-min film announcement, a 1-min introduction by the director, a 1-min teaser trailer, a 1-min theatrical trailer, a 7-mins of Shout! Factory trailers, plus both the R-rated and director's cut of the film presented on separate discs.  

The 2-disc release arrives in an standard 2-spindle Blu-ray keepcase with artwork featuring the original movie poster, the reverse side featuring a scene from the film displayed landscape-style across the panels, with each disc featuring separate artwork.

Special Features:
- Includes both the theatrical cut (151 in) and director's cut(153 min)
- Sonning Prize: An interview with director Lars Von Trier (27 min) 
- Lars Von Trier Greeting (1 min)
- Teaser Trailer (1 min)
- Theatrical Trailer (1 min) 

- Trailers: Radioflash, Greener Grass, The Nightingale (7 min)

I loved The House That Jack Built (2018), it's a button-pusher that pushed all the right buttons, blending the macabre and grotesque with some interesting psychological underpinnings. There's a delightfully demented vein of humor throughout, and on top of all that is a rather brilliant performance from Matt Dillon, and a hilarious final song selection that is the cherry on top of this pitch-black serial killer thriller, stoked this has finally gotten a U.S. release, and with a few more extras, audio and viewing options than the barebones Australian release.