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The House That Jack Built(2018)
IFC Films Dec 14, 2018 | Limited
In five episodes, failed architect and vicious sociopath Jack recounts his elaborately orchestrated murders -- each, as he views them, a towering work of art that defines his life's work as a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest.
Releases
Original Release | Dec 14, 2018
Box Office
Results
$34,273
$258,106
$2,823,807
$3,081,913
Director & Top Cast
Technical Specifications
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: 2.39 : 1
Other Details
Country of Origin: Denmark
Summaries
Plot Summary
- Jack, a prolific serial killer and failed architect in 1980s Washington, recounts five of his crimes to Virgil-whom he refers to as Verge-as Verge leads Jack through the nine circles of Hell. Each of Jack's crimes, depicted through flashback, feature commentary from both Jack and Verge, as Jack attempts to expound his worldview and a rationale for his murders as a grand artistic gesture.In the first incident, Jack encounters a woman on a rural road who needs to fix her broken jack to repair a flat tire. He takes her to the local blacksmith who repairs it, but when they return and attempt to lift the car, the jack breaks again. The woman requests that Jack return her to the blacksmith. Offended by her manner, Jack bludgeons her with the tire jack. He stores her body in an industrial freezer inside a factory building, which he previously purchased from a pizzeria.In the second incident, Jack cons his way into the home of a widow, Claire, and strangles her to death before stabbing her in the chest. At night, Jack drags Claire's body out of her house and puts it in the back of his car. His obsessive-compulsive disorder propels him to meticulously clean every surface of the house, nearly resulting in him being caught when a suspicious police officer stops in the area. Jack hides Claire's body in the bushes before the officer stops by Claire's home. Jack manages to outwit the guileless officer by pretending to be an acquaintance of Claire. Jack soon leaves, he grabs rope from the plastic that the body was wrapped up in and ties it to the van. Jack drives off towing Claire's body behind the van creating a blood trail from the head dragging on the pavement. He arrives at the warehouse as it starts raining, washing away the blood trail and putting Claire's corpse in the freezer. After this incident, Jack declares himself "Mr. Sophistication," and begins signing anonymous letters to the media with this moniker. He also develops a fetish for posing and photographing his victims' corpses.In the third incident, Jack brings his girlfriend and her two sons, Grumpy and George, on a hunting trip in a forest clearing. During the excursion, he kills both sons with a rifle from a hunting tower before forcing the woman to have a picnic with their corpses. He then hunts and ultimately kills her. As Jack recounts this incident-which he analogizes to hunting animals-Verge comments with particular disgust for Jack's murdering of children.In the fourth incident, Jack is carrying on a dysfunctional relationship with Jacqueline (Riley Keough), whom he demeaningly refers to as "Simple" as he believes her to be stupid. When he drunkenly confesses to Jacqueline that he has killed 60 people, she does not believe him. After he marks red circles around her breasts with a marker, she becomes frightened and approaches a policeman, but he dismisses her and Jack as drunks. After being locked without escape in her apartment, Jack binds and gags her before cutting off her breasts with a knife. He pins one of the breasts to the policeman's car and fashions the other into a wallet.In the fifth incident, Jack has detained five men in his freezer and bound them with their heads positioned along a post, intending to kill all of them with a single bullet. Upon realizing his ammunition has been mislabeled, he leaves and angrily chastises the gun shop owner before visiting a friend, SP, who phones a police officer who has accused Jack of a recent robbery. Jack stabs SP through the throat, waits for the police, then kills the summoned officer. Jack steals the officer's car and returns to his freezer with the appropriate bullet. Needing more space to gain focus through the scope, Jack unseals a closed door inside the freezer, revealing a second chamber. Inside, he meets Verge, who reveals he has been observing Jack throughout his life and reminds him that he has never built the literal home he intended to build. Jack had made several attempts to build the perfect house between his murders. In the freezer, Jack arranges the frozen corpses he has collected over the years into the shape of a house. As police break into the freezer, drawn by the car siren Jack has left on outside, Jack enters his makeshift house, and follows Verge into a hole in the floor, entering Hell.After passing a window overlooking the Elysian Fields, the two eventually reach a pit leading to the ninth circle and centre of Hell. A broken bridge spans the pit. Jack notices a stairway on the other side of the bridge, which Verge says leads to the way out of Hell. Jack attempts to scale a rock wall to access the staircase, against Verge's advice, and falls into the abyss below.
Storyline
- USA in the 1970s. We follow the highly intelligent Jack over a span of 12 years and are introduced to the murders that define Jack's development as a serial killer. We experience the story from Jack's point of view, while he postulates that each murder is an artwork in itself. As the inevitable police intervention is drawing nearer, he is taking greater and greater risks in his attempt to create the ultimate artwork. Along the way we experience Jack's descriptions of his personal condition, problems and thoughts through a recurring conversation with the unknown Verge--a grotesque mixture of sophistry mixed with an almost childlike self-pity and psychopathic explanations. The House That Jack Built is a dark and sinister story, yet presented through a philosophical and occasional humorous tale. — Zentropa Entertainments Reflecting on his existence, disturbed Jack, a failed architect and sadistic serial killer, drones on about his twelve-year reign of terror to Verge, his unseen, enigmatic companion. To illuminate the significance of his systematic atrocities, Jack recounts five defining, randomly chosen incidents from his busy, blood-spattered life, making sure to include every single detail of his elaborate, revolting murders. But in Jack's eyes, these grisly killings are works of art. What will it take to create his magnum opus and end his brutal career with a bang? — Nick Riganas Jack is a quiet, seemingly-harmless architect, working on building his dream house. One day, in a fit of annoyance and anger, he kills a woman to whom he had reluctantly given a lift. He discovers that he enjoys killing, and over the next 12 years he goes on a killing spree. — grantss
