JACK GOES HOME
US, 2016, 100 minutes, Colour.
Rory Culkin, Daveigh Chase, Lin Shaye, Britt Robertson, Nikki Reed, Natasha Lyonne, Louis Hunter.
Directed by Thomas Dekker.
Now here is a weird and somewhat bewildering film. It is the work of actor Thomas Dekker (who was somewhat weird and bewildering as one of the alien children in the 1995 version of Children of the Damned, and the star of Greg Iraqi’s Kaboom). he has written the screenplay here and has directed.
There is some early warning is Rory Culkin as Jack sits in his office but muses on the universe, the meaning of life and composes poetry. His girlfriend (Britt Robertson) is six months pregnant.
The audience have seen the accident already, Jack’s mother and father on the highway at night, collision with a deer, a crash and the death of the father. Jack receives the news at his office in California and returns home to Colorado.
Touches a weirdness begin as we introduced to his mother, Lin Shaye, star of so many horror and comic films, getting a more substantial, if somewhat similar, role. She does not grieve, her son questioning her, her going into tantrums. The audience has seen Jack sleepwalking and he has nightmares.
At home, the funeral is conducted at which she speaks but his mother wants to go home.He is helped by a childhood friend, Sean D, Dev a Chase, who is in a lesbian relationship with Crystal, Nikki Reed. There is also a touch of weirdness in the young man who lives across the way whom Jack glimpses, one-time naked, other times curious, who offers drugs, talking, listening to Jack’s weird experiences, making some sexual advances, as well as taking him to a club.
The screenplay becomes more complex when Jack goes into the attic, finds audiotapes and videotapes addressed to him, from his dead father, as well as as a dossier about a sexual abuse case. He also discovers that he has a twin, his mother explaining that he has died, although the intention was to drown Jack in the bath because he cried so much.
By this stage, the audience is wondering how much is real, how much is fantasy, what is happening in Jack’s imagination, especially as he relives the accident with his mother.
While Jack goes home, he also goes into his interior psyche, with bewildering results for himself and for the audience.
1. A bizarre psychological story, mystery, touches of horror?
2. California, workplaces, relationships, normal? The sequence of the accident on the road, the deer, the crash? The contrast with Colorado, the family home, interiors, the attic? The countryside? The funeral service? The musical score?
3. Thomas Dekker as writer and director? His personal comments about film-writing enabling expression of the myriad of personalities inside the creative mind?
4. The introduction to Jack, close-up of his eyes, his reflections about life, the cosmos, growth and change? His poetry? His work at the office, the contact with Cleo, her pregnancy, three months before birth? His coworker, the comment about poetry, the use of the term Bro and Jack quibbling about it? Jack and his being articulate, is vocabulary, poetry?
5. The audience seen the accident happen, the road, the deer, the crash?
6. Jack receiving the news? His going home to Colorado? Looking for his mother in the house? The meal and the discussion about expressions of grief? Jack seeming normal, expecting his mother to cry? His saying that he did not cry? His mother’s outburst, her freedom about how she manifested her grief?
7. To build tracing the relationship between mother and son? Moments of tenderness? Moments of anger? Her self-assertion? Going to her room? With the violin? A reaction to the dog? Jack and is going to the vet, the pleasant talk with Nancy, her raising the issue of God in prayer? His mother’s condemnation of her? Bringing the dog back home,
playing around the house, his mother criticising it scratching at the door (and her ultimately killing the dog)?
8. Jack and his friendship with Shonda? Her ability to listen? Knowing each other since children? It her fearing the house was haunted, apprehension about his mother? The two talking together, the funeral, smoking pot together? His support of her, her relationship with Crystal, coming out? Crystal and her criticisms – yet allowing Shonda to support Jack?
9. The preparation for the funeral, the ceremony, outdoors, Jack speech, his mother going to the water, wanting to go home, Shonda driving them?
10. The presence of Duncan across the way, seen through the window, standing naked at the window, making contact with Jack, the discussions, Jack condemning him for pontificating, his apology in the window and the response? Going to the club, doing the drugs? The man at the bar, reading Jack’s palm? Heart and head – and saying that Jack was already dead? Duncan, his personality, the sexual approach, the kisses?
11. Jack, his sleepwalking in the past, his talk about the attic? His nightmares? Going up to the attic, finding the audiotape, playing it, his father talking to him, then finding the videotapes, playing them? The discovery about his twin? Listening to his father? The mystery of the bath and death? Finding the papers, the story of sexual assault, cases? His father’s apology?
12. His mother, telling the story of the twins, Jack always crying, Andrew quiet? The father’s desperation, taking the child to the bath, drowning the child – but drowning Andrew? And was the name for Jack and Chloe’s baby?
13. Jack and the piano, his mother, the music, dancing, taking her to the car, the reliving of the accident? His mother on the ground? Shonda and her arrival, taking him away?
14. When did reality and fantasy begin to blur? For Jack? For the audience? How much of the screenplay was real life? How much dream? How much fantasy created in Jack’s imagination?
