The House That Jack Built (2018)

Up until now I’ve never really got on with Lars Von Trier. Despite the acclaim that met Melancholia (2011), it really tried my patience, I thought Nymphomaniac Parts I and II (2013) were pretty dull, and I can’t say Antichrist (2009) was a particularly enjoyable experience, despite having some very interesting ideas. The House That Jack Built is by far my favourite Von Trier film to date: Matt Dillon stars as a serial killer who tells of several ‘incidents’ through a voice-over that appears to be a conversation with Bruno Ganz. After mass walkouts at its Cannes premiere (no surprise there) Von Trier was supposedly disappointed, claiming that the people who hated it, didn’t hate it enough. So, we throw our eyes to heaven, and watch it to see if it deserved all the fuss. It’s really pointless to call Von Trier a controversial filmmaker, he aims to upset, and I certainly didn’t find The House That Jack Built disturbing, or indeed as nasty as Antichrist. It’s unpleasant in places; there are one or two scenes that are particularly grim, but for the most part it’s an interesting film, and dare I say it, fairly gripping at times, which is not a sentence I expected to be using in a review of a Von Trier film. Matt Dillon is tremendously vicious, a murderer with OCD which is a problem for a serial killer, especially in one exquisite sequence in which he keeps imagining that he’s left blood smears at the scene of a murder and repeatedly reenters said scene to double check. So if you like Von Trier it’s certainly worth a watch, if you hate him don’t go near it, and if you’re really indifferent like me, I’d have to say it’s the most interesting he’s been in a long time. 7.5/10