Dir: Jon Knautz.Cast: Trevor Matthews, Robert Englund
Review: Its taken awhile to get around to this one, led by positive reaction on pretty much every horror site during Jack Brooks' festival curcuit run. For the most part the positive reactions were valid. The film has a lot that many zero budjet horror offerings don't. Most impressive, and most important of all in my opinion, is that the film looks good. It's well shot, not too much hand-held, dynamic framing and good light/dark contrast in the many night time scenes. The acting, dodgy at best even in studio horror fare, is pretty good here, the stand out being of course Trevor Matthews as the titular Jack Brooks. That's saying a lot considering Matthews in a stuntman by trade and though he is put through his paces on the physical front, there are a number of scenes where Matthews illicites genuine empathy for Jack. While its always nice to see horror veterans like Englund working, he hams it up alittle too much, and its esspecially noticable in scenes with the 'playing-it-straight' Matthews. Actually, there's a very curious scene that involves the two actors that is played so dead pan, I'm still not sure If I was reading it right. It involves a lot of talk of Jack coming around to 'unblock' the professor's (Englund) pipes. I read homoerotic, but you be the judge. The all important FX of Jack Brooks are also handled very well, when not in tight close-up. It is here the film's inspirations are laid bare, Evil Dead II and Peter Jackson's Brain Dead, to an almost blinding degree, but director Knautz can be forgiven for this indulgence as he has his fun with such glowing reverance. However, all the above doesn't not a cult classic make. Jack Brooks is a one note, one idea story stretched out to nearly 90 minutes. It should be half that. We really only get to the good stuff in the last half an hour. It really feels like many scenes are just padding, esspecially those with Jack's anger managment councillor and all the classroom scenes with Englund. This excess of scenes over states minor story and character developments making everything more predictable and in turn the viewer more impatiant to there foregone conclusion.
While it really should have been a short film (though I know they would have never got the funding for it) the filmmakers behind Jack Brooks should still be proud, as the elements that do work, work well.
Rating: 3/5.
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