Jackals

Saw this recently on a blu-ray. Had seen the trailer n the concept of cult group n the theme of home invasion piqued my interest. Of course Kevin Greutert's name was the other good factor. The guy being an editor himself knows how to control his film's pacing and how to build suspense. Most people r comparing it to The Strangers (2008) but if u read the trivia section, the script of this film was written in 2006. The other thing is Greutert was the editor for The Strangers but the real fact is The Strangers itself was a copy of the far superior French film Them aka Ils (2006). Coming back to this film, the director managed to start the film well with the initial home invasion murders a la Halloween style n then cut back to the van kidnapping scene n the cabin in the middle of nowhere. The settings n era were good too. The 80's era was obviously to show the lack of mobile phones n a reference to the Charles Manson cult group. The mask-wearing villains were creepy, Stephen Dorff's role was very small. I really wanted some showdown between him n the villains. Some viewers may complain that it would hav been better for the family to leave the cultist son but if u notice the start scene, the cultist person do come back to slaughter his family.

A family employ a former Marine to kidnap and help reverse the brainwashing that their one son has under gone when he joined a dark and dangerous evil cult. The members want him back and lay siege to the family's isolated house. Jackals has a very basic plot but that does not matter, this movie is an exercise in terror and suspense, of violence and darkness. It is well acted and shot, the location gives a real feel of isolation and helplessness. The cult members, all dressed in leather and wearing creepy animal style masks, look terrifying. The movie is set several decades before it was made, I don't know why - perhaps it was to eliminate the ability of any body trapped inside the family home to use their cell 'phone and call for help? (needless to say the landline had been cut off). Overall a pretty decent 85 minutes, better than The Strangers.

It's difficult to make movies this terrible. This is one where you wonder how on earth this was made and does someone have pictures of Steven Dorff doing something very embarrassing? In short, the audience isn't told much about what is really going on because that would ruin any sense of understanding what is going on and why. There is a cult that wears masks when they want to feel scary and they are using knives to slice up people in an awkward "we're in a movie" sort of way. After an opening of senseless violence, you are taken to the cabin in the woods where you learn that a father has grabbed his son and his friend who apparently are now a part of a cult. Dorff plays the deprogrammer.

The acting is terrible. Dorff can't save the film and it's clear that they couldn't pay for him to be on screen very long. But not only is the acting terrible but the dialogue is laughably stilted and awkward. The longer it goes on the more you wonder why on earth you're watching because every character acts about as dumb as you'd expect in a bad B-horror movie.

And as was asked by the forgettable girl, why didn't this gang just break the windows and bull rush the cabin and kill all of them. Wouldn't be too difficult. But if they did, you would have all this scary imagery going on to prolong the movie for an interminable hour to create something that resembles The Void. "We must have all our cult people stand motionless in the dark with masks on to create a semblance of something scary that could only be explained by a movie director choreographing this charade." Even the scared family is trying to figure out what on earth the father is trying to do since even stupid people wouldn't act the way he is.

I actually haven't provided any spoilers. I'll just say that the movie deliberately doesn't provide you what you should know because it needs something to get you to watch until the end. Why? Who cares? This is not just bad. It's spectacularly bad.

Just pure and simple lazy writing. Movie had potential but it was obviously rushed in hopes that the creators would just hope that the movie watchers don't have a brain. And just go eww ahhh scaryyy.. lame!

Just another knockoff of The Strangers. In fact, this director worked on that movie, so I guess that's where he got the idea. The bad guys here have slightly more motive than in The Strangers, they're attacking this house to get one of their members back, but beyond that we know absolutely nothing about them or their motives, only that they're another group of mysterious masked people who like to arbitrarily torture and murder anyone in their way.

It's not a terrible movie, but it doesn't really do anything new or interesting either. It's watchable, but completely unmemorable. Don't expect any form of satisfaction from the ending either.

One more thing. Why did they bother to make this set in the early 80's? It seemed to have no bearing at all on the plot or characters and if it wasn't for the old style TV and picture of Ronald Reagan on a mantle that they show for a few seconds in the beginning, you'd never know this was supposed to be happening in the 80's. There's no 80's feel to anything in the movie. Somehow I suspect that they did this for the sole purpose of creating an excuse for no one to have a phone...