“The House That Jack Built” is arthouse and shock auteur Lars Von Trier’s newest film. The film is set up in a very similar fashion to his Nymphomaniac films. If you haven’t seen those, then essentially what I mean is that he has broken the film up into five non-linear acts. The principle story is that of the titular character Jack and his homicidal and sociopathic tendencies.
He is a failed architect who is attempting to make his own perfect home, all the while killing people at random and freezing them in a massive industrial refrigerator room.
The overall point of this film, something that I will return to later, is that while Jack views the building of a home as great art, he also believes that his killings are great art. Often-times he will muse to an off-screen character named Virgil about the psychoanalytic origins of his killing ways, but these mainly come off as pretentious and annoying.
And this is where I have my real trepidations about calling this film good—even passable. I’m a big fan of violent movies, but this movie’s violence is just obnoxious and annoying—very, very annoying. In fact, I would liken the film to the 2012 remake of “Maniac.” In that movie, the violence is grotesque as we follow a serial killer killing. The violence is brutal and completely horrifying. What is different about “Maniac” is that it isn’t trying to pretend like it has something to say. It’s just there to showcase brutality.
“The House That Jack Built” is really just a hunk of pretentious nonsense that tries to flaunt how violent it can be in front of you. It perhaps sheds some light on how a serial killer thinks and how that thought process might evolve, but what could be interesting is instead clouded behind meandering and needlessly tiresome monologues—during which, Von Trier put clips from his old films.
This is quite a shame as the film is excellently shot and is also carried by a wonderful, yet completely despising performance by Matt Dillon. Dillon brings a dark sense of humor to the film that is often as shocking as it is funny. Unfortunately, by the end, he just becomes so annoying that I no longer cared what he said.
I would only recommend this film if you are a fan of Von Trier. That is really it. It’s shot excellently, and no one is ever going to call Von Trier a hack from a filmmaking perspective, but this film is just too self-indulgent for me to ever consider re-watching it again.
Rating: 4.87/10