Jackals (2017)

A family shelter in an isolated cabin.  A hostile group of relentless marauders lay siege to them.  This is the stuff of many films, and it is also the stuff of 2017 Jackals.  A film about which the best thing you can say is it does what it sets out to do pretty well, and the worst thing you can say about it is it could have been a much better film.

"Daddy, we will have a lot of things to talk through once this is over."

The idea underpinning the narrative - a family attempts to 'deprogram' their son, the brainwashed member of a cult - was interesting and could have been developed a lot more. There was scope for an intriguing cat-and-mouse battle between the family and their ex-army deprogrammer, and the swivel eyed son; and the belief system of the cult could have been explored. 

Instead, the intervention aspect is really just a MacGuffin, used to set up the plot of the film, because it requires these people to be in an isolated area so they can be assailed by the cult, intent on getting their lost sheep back. 

So instead of a psychological battle of wits or a journey into a tormented psyche we get a standard siege movie, as if the writer had seen Assault on Precinct 13 and decided it was overdue a remake (bearing in mind Assault was already a remake of an old Howard Hawks Western).  Or Night of the Living Dead.  Or Sleeping Dogs.  Or White Settlers.  Or The Retreat.  Or ... You get the point.  There is nothing new under the sun, but there are some things more familiar than others.

(I'd make a case for Texas Chainsaw Massacre being at least in part a siege movie, as far as Leatherface is concerned.  He's just minding his own business and these kids just keep piling into his house, botherin' him some.)

I seem to have been writing reviews like this a lot recently.  The pedigree of The Hills Have Eyes idea of a group of naive, bumbling city folk blundering into the territory of the inbred, zombified, homicidal locals is a venerable one and which has been explored in many horror films, and horror adjacent films like Deliverance and Southern Comfort.  It's easy to see why - it comes with its own built in narrative tension and can be produced cheaply in low cost settings.  It's grand fare for film makers to cut their teeth on, and I suppose we should always be grateful they did not opt for a found footage aesthetic.

"We might be deranged bloodthirsty cultists, but at least we ain't filming this on our mobile phones."

I suppose there is a academic thesis waiting to be written on the resurgence (if it ever stopped surging in the first place) of the sub-genre, and the significance of its appeal.  Could we discern a metaphor for modern paranoia and fear of everything outside comfort zone of values and ideas we like and people we trust?  Are all the inbred hillbillies and zombies and so on really just the final reduction of people who disagree with us?  Hostile reddit users given fleshy form and portrayed as remorselessly attacking the safety of our echo chamber?  Or is it a grander metaphor for environmental collapse, as people - always other people, of course, not us - set about blithely destroying our comfortable haven?

Or is it just because they are comparatively quick and easy for film makers on a tight budget to make?

But I digress.  Jackals weighs in at a svelte 83 minutes.  And a chunk of that slender run time is taken up with a pointless opening sequence shot which is really there so the director can indulge his Wellesian fantasies - though who can begrudge him that?  There isn't much time for characters to be developed, or more than a superficial veneer of morbid dread to be applied.

Which is all frustrating because there is a tantalising idea here, nay, two tantalising ideas.  The battle for control of an errant mind is arresting, and a delineation of the cult and what made it so appealing would also have provided ample interest.  Hell, we never get a solid handle on what the cult is all about - they seem to spend a lot of time standing around in the dark wearing animal masks but I am guessing this isn't the primary purpose.  Is it political?  Religious?  Occult?  Without that background, its hard to view the cultists as more than mindless attack drones sent to mindlessly attack for ... plot reasons.

Another strand that could have been plucked at would be the similarities between the family and the cult.  Both, after all, are vying for the control of the mind of one young man, and trying to impose a set of values upon him.  Both are willing to resort to coercion and violence to achieve their goals.  And both, as we see, are willing to fight fanatically for what they believe in.  We're definitely encouraged to be on the family's side - we spend all our time with them and get told why they are doing what they are doing - but at the end of the day isn't that how cults operate as well?  Transgression of social norms - and isn't society just the biggest cult of them all? -  is explained away and normalised and presented as the positive and correct course of action.  Bombing a third world country to protect ourselves from an alleged threat is simply Jackals - told from within the hermetically sealed world of the cult - writ larger.

But this is me ruminating, trying to find something to say about the film, not ideas that are lambent within the film itself.  I want there to be more to this film than a slick little thriller, but I am not sure there is.

Put that aside, however, and Jackals is fairly efficient at delivering its jolts and thrills.  Viewed as a siege film, it is pretty good.  Even its brief run time might be viewed as a bonus in that context - who really wants to spend two hours watching people peer nervously out of windows?

Peering nervously out of windows actually attracts the bad guys and never, ever gives you any forewarning.  Don't do it.

The night time setting for most of the action lets the director have lots of fun with light and shadow,  There are some creepy, tense moments and some decently staged action sequences and the climax does pack some emotional wallop.

All in all, Jackals is not bad. It's actually pretty good at what it does. Just that what it does is something that has been done a lot.  And it could have been more, if the people behind it had decided to explore the potential of their idea.

Star Rating: *