The Jack in the Box: El despertar

In this british jack the box horror flick, written and directed by mr fowler that has fumbled a whole lot on the plot speed, the filmographic brightness gives vibes of 1980's bbc studio tv theater, but thats merely it on the downside.

Its quite good acted, small cast,good screaming, enerving score and sound effects and few sets, light and shadow work are impeccable, and the jack in the box is quite enerving and well acted and styled non-vfx/cgi, the horror segments makes you feel quite uncomfortable and there are a pretty lot of them throughout the screening, so if your nerves are bleeched and your heart faintful, then a small warning to you.

So if you have a tendency towards jacks in a box stories with an alternative clutch on the straw then this might be IT. Of course you couldve written a better screenplay than this you might think, but the grumpy old man , who has shown quite some grit towards british low budget horrorfilmaking may give a recommend to this one.

Poor poor poor and poor in every way. The script is boring, obviously written by an amateur. The acting is very bad, overacting in a very bad way. The actors are the worst, can't be any worse.

The first film was a well-shot, but fairly run-of-the-mill direct-to-video horror. The production value was good for the budgetary constraints, but overall, the story was generic and felt a little padded.

'The Jack in the Box: Awakening' is certainly an improvement. We begin with what seems like a basic horror film setup, but the film surprised me by showing a surprisingly large amount of the story through (one of) the villain's perspective. It's very clever from an emotional standpoint and the acting was actually really good from everyone, but Matt McClure as Edgar is definitely the standout.

So the story, is actually quite well-done, and while there is a somewhat overlong exposition scene, it's more about the emotional journey than it is all the backstory of the demon. There are some very effective sequences of tension building too, often involving lights, which sounds very rudimentary on paper, but, trust me, it's used to good effect here.

I only wish they hadn't shied away on many of the kills though: a disappointing amount of them happen off-screen, which is okay for a few times and I know suspense is more effective than gore, but it is a slasher and I would have like to have seen a little more pay-off with the deaths.

I would recommend this for low-budget horror fans. Aside from being just a little overlong, it's a fairly uniquely-told story with good production value (the locations are gorgeous), well-done cinematography and some decent suspense and scares. Lawrence Fowler has clearly grown as a writer and director and you won't be lost if you skip the original film. I wish the creators the best luck in their future endeavours.

Its nothing more than utter crap. Its bad acting, bad plot and just utter boredom to watch. They try some jumpscare, but at most you get annoyed. After 20 min. Of watching this crap, i began playing Fishdom on my phone. Avoid.

The original 'The Jack in the Box' movie was a pretty different origin story horror movie, which was a good watch. My partner and I enjoyed watching it. This sequel expanded on the backstory of the Jack in the box, which was again interesting, but mot different enough to make the movie much better. It still had the same kind of story, a different setting, of course, but the same kind of kills. I only wanted to watch it to see if things were going to be different, but they kind of wasn't. It was worth a one-time watch, only for the expanded backstory, but that's about it. My partner and I will watch the third movie, but only to complete the series and move on to the next horror movie we well watch. 4/10.