Review: ‘Anything For Jackson’
Somewhere in the snowy American suburbs, an elderly couple, the wealthy Dr Henry Walsh (Julian Richings) and his quiet wife Audrey (Sheila McCarthy), sit in their house and mundanely discuss his clothing as they wait for someone to arrive. However, when that someone does arrive in the shape of heavily pregnant Becker (Konstantina Mantelos), they attack her with a hammer and drag her into the cellar, and the madness just continues from there.
In this disturbing film from director Justin G. Dyck, we see the exorcism and satanism elements of many classic films of the past both paid homage to and pointedly subverted to create a compelling and unique horror flick. Henry and Audrey have kidnapped his patient Becker in order to perform a reverse exorcism on her and get the soul of their dead grandson Jackson to take over the child’s body. However, as you might expect, this doesn’t go quite to plan.
Henry finds himself constantly covering his tracks as the police keeping pushing him for information about Becker’s disappearance, and the couple quickly prove to be in way over their heads as they perform the rituals, accidentally unleashing an array of evil spirits on the house and its inhabitants. This causes deep torment to not only kidnapped Becker, but to the Walsh’s themselves, as some of their worst nightmares play out.
One of the main things that helps this film succeed is the performances from the two leads. While Henry and Audrey are very much terrible people, Satanists who plan to kill an expecting mother and her unborn baby, they are not classic pantomime villains as they do it all very much from a place of grief and love for their grandson. Much of this is shown to us by Richings and McCarthy, who were perfectly cast as they have a stirring visual look where they strike the ordinary but disturbed balance perfectly, and the two actors deliver by making their characters not only terrifying but deeply human.
Despite this and the strong performances, one of the main issues I had with the film is that I couldn’t get massively emotionally invested in the story and the characters, which led to some of the suspense being sucked out of the film. The reason for this is that in the second half, the film moves away from its focus on the story about the old couple and the woman they have kidnapped, and introduces an essentially new character in to the mix, who then taken up a considerable amount of screen time. While it is not horrible, it just unnecessarily distracts from the main story that was working well, and dives deeper into the satanism and supernatural elements, and the human story gets slightly left behind.
Something the film does particularly well, and what I think will likely end up being the biggest part of its legacy, is effectively mixing supernatural scares with practical body horror, to create a really unique mash up. The biggest stand out of all is the terrifying ghost creature known as the Suffocating Ghost (Troy James), who crawls around in a crab-like fashion with a plastic bag wrapped around his head. He is used sparingly and to great effect throughout the film, and is the perfect example of the effective use of special effects to create something truly terrifying.
Overall, the film definitely has some flaws and doesn’t particularly re-invent the wheel, but it has an interesting premise, great atmosphere, real scares, and strong performances, and when they all combine, it leaves you with an effective horror film and another strong entry on the increasingly impressive horror platform, Shudder. – Sam Howe
Rating: 3.5/5
Anything For Jackson is now streaming on Shudder.