Jack O' Lantern (2004) — Triskaidekafiles

JACK O’ LANTERN

WRITER: Ron McLellen

DIRECTOR: Ron McLellen

STARRING: Justice Leak as Billy

Cheri Christian as Laurie

Tracy Yarkoni as Christine

April Glover as Paige

Brian Bradley as Josh

Sacha Dzuba as Max

Kevin Powers as Brett

Joel Hunter as Rev. Willis

Dave R. Watkins as Jack

QUICK CUT: Following a tragedy a year ago, old friends reconnect a year later to try and bury the past.

THE MORGUE

Jack - A young man who lost his father a year ago in a horrible accident he barely survived. He’s spent the last year in a mute, catatonic state. Once he comes out of it, he’s a bitter young man, understandable, who just can’t stay awake.

Christine - A young woman who goes to the local college, troubled by her past, but always manages to look out for her friends.

Brett - Another local student who helps take care of Jack while he recovers, since Jack’s dad helped Brett’s family out a lot. He is also the One With the Car, who gives rides to all his friends.

Billy - Yet another kid in town, who has been ostracised from the group, save for Brett, and is just trying to keep his head down and get through things.

TRISK ANALYSIS: Happy Triskoween, everyone! I know I've done Halloween (the series) movies in this slot for the last great while, but I wanted to mix things up (And if you noticed, I took a break from ALL the big franchises this year!), and kick the month off with something different, but still Halloween, in an obscure flick I stumbled across called "Jack O'Lantern". Let's get carving.

We start this Halloween party with a trio of friends driving around some dirty back roads, getting nervous that the truck is low on gas, but don't worry! says the driver, he knows his truck, they won't run out of gas!

Famous last words...

While they predictably do exactly that, we cut to a hillbilly murder family trying to find one of their victims that has run off. And already, this is too many movies.

Who could have predicted this entirely predictable result?

One of the travelers starts walking to a house they saw a few miles back, and the other two sit it out in the truck to wait.

Deke runs into one of the killbillies and gets taken out of the plot. Meanwhile, the other two get high and kill time, until a blonde woman comes running up, trying to get the truck running, but oops, you came upon the absolute worst case scenario.

Once she determines they're gonna be no help, she keeps running off, and warns them not to go to the old house Deke is hiking towards...oops.

This is about the time ANOTHER interested party walks into things, and after the killibillies murder Trent and Jamal, it takes out the murderers. So, so many things going on here.

WELL that was short, I know I've had a bunch of movies with quick runtimes, but this is a new reco...wait what? There's a whole lot more movie left? Oh dangit.

So we skip ahead to a year later, and a few states away, moving from Mississippi to North Carolina. We meet Jack as he's waking up from a nightmare about getting into an accident with his dad.

We go through the motions of meeting all our actual canon fodder for the rest of the movie, as a bunch of college students parade into the plot.

Laurie and Christine are discussing Halloween plans, and Chris isn't in the spirit of the season, because it's been "one year since it happened". Gee, whatever could she be traumatised by?

Back on the farm, Jack has a quick visit with his uncle the local preacher, and Josh picks up his girlfriend Paige, with his best friend, Max the random Russian. Seriously, one of the kids just being randomly Russian is delightful. I am positive this movie is just a group of friends having a good time.

So yeah, this is a slow start, so I do appreciate the cold open with some tasty muuurder, but I am getting antsy.

Back at Jack's, someone drops off a pumpkin, knocks on the door, and leaves. Jack comes out, finds the gourd, and decides to do what anyone would do when gifted a pumpkin at Halloween; carve it up!

Plot complication, the pumpkin starts bleeding.

Jack continues to carve the pumpkin, smearing blood everywhere, and staining his hands red. He heads inside to get some help from Brett, because Jack may be traumatised and mute from his dad's death, but even he knows this is concerning. Or he just wants a candle.

Elsewhere, Josh and Max stop off and their truck dies. While Max is under the hood trying to get it working again, Merv Pumpkinhead shows up behind him, and shoves his face into one of the fan belts or something. ...Look, I don't know engines.

The next day, word spreads of the accidental death, and Paige goes to see Josh and make sure he's doing okay.

Thanks, Masked Mechanic! I see the problem now!

Billy and Brett are wandering around doing things, and Billy has been avoiding his cousin Jack since the accident, since he just has not been the same since his dad died.

However, Brett insists that, if Billy wants a ride to school, he can take the five minutes to spend some time with Jack. And it is a NICE cut immediately from that to Billy saying "Hi, Jack." I love that shit.

Elsewhere, Laurie goes for a run, and starts getting an uneasy feeling, amidst some green PredaVision shots.

Thanks to being distracted, and an additionally distracted driver, she gets hit by a car. It seems like she's in serious pain, but has a solid chance. The guy calls an ambulance, and while he's focused on that, whatever force is wandering through this movie makes his car start to roll and crash into Laurie's face.

The next day, everyone notices Laurie is missing, with a whole bunch of random students. I mean, at least the school feels populated by more then six students.

Paige goes to check on Josh as he tries to fix his car, and he confides in her that it wasn't an accident that killed Max, and that he saw some kind of creature.

Once she's gone, Josh resumes work, until the lights go out. That's when the monsters come out to play though, and fortunately Paige is still nearby to hear his screams.

HR Puffinstuff fell on hard times and began using the marijuana.

She looks in the garage, and Josh’s dead body drops from above at her feet, making her scream and run off.

Meanwhile, Billy pays Jack another visit, and he is much more talkative lately. Wait...is this a kinda reverse Pumpkinhead situation, with Jack becoming stronger the more the creature kills people?

The next day, Paige catches people up on what she saw, and isn't telling the cops, because who would believe her?

Christine does some poking around, discovers Laurie died a few days ago, and they realise it must be Jack because of reasons yet to be explicitly stated.

Paige and her spend the night together to keep an eye on each other, and we instantly cut to morning, both girls still alive, but Christine freaking out, rocking back and forth, and clutching a gun.

Well I guess a whole lot happened last night, why didn't you share with the rest of the class, movie??

Chris explains she saw the creature, got the gun, and for some reason that will never be explained, he didn't bother to attack Paige. But don't worry! She is somehow accidentally shot by the very twitchy Christine.

Meanwhile, Uncle Ray is working on his tractor when Merv shows up and drives it over his face. Jack wakes up, calls over, and tells his aunt to go check on him, because he knows what happened.

The news of Father Ray's passing rocks the small town, things get a bit hectic as everyone who knows bits and pieces tries to connect to put the puzzle together.

Christina catches up with Brett, and she finally fills him, and us, about what I've been dancing around because it is painfully obvious what happened a year ago; the people being killed were responsible for the accident that killed Jack's dad, and keeping it quiet at Billy's insistence.

So, I Know What You Did Last Halloween, by way of Pumpkinhead.

The reverend shows up, and leads the coverup charge. Everyone is willing to go along with it, since he puts the fear of consequences into them. The only one who voices any dissent is Paige, so I guess that's why Jacko didn't kill her? I mean, a moot point, thanks to friendly fire, but I guess it's an explanation if you need one.

Jack overhears all this, and while he's felt bad as he has realised what he's been doing via his homunculus, learning just how deliberate of a coverup it was, he runs off.

The duo find Jack, and so does Billy, armed with a shotgun. Because he's put enough together with the bodies to know Jack is responsible.

Billy locks everyone in the barn, after knocking Jack out, and the creature comes to protect his summoner.

It swings an axe at Billy, who barely ducks out of the way before it embeds itself into a post. And just as I'm hoping the movie does it, the creature hoists Billy into the air and hangs him on the opposite side of the hatchet. Perfection.

Inside, they wake Jack up so the creature disappears before it can take their lives too. But the good news is, it at least opened the door to get them before it did, and now they can leave.

They run a little ways before Jack passes out again from all the head trauma, and because the creature is almost forcing him to be asleep. Brett and Christina leave him behind, with Brett piecing all this together on his own.

"God damn you, god damn you!!" "He already has!"

Christine runs off, since she's the one Jack-o is after, and Brett keeps trying to wake up Jack, to varying degrees of success.

The movie starts playing a bit fast and lose with the "Jack must be asleep" rule here, and you can either run with 'the creature is getting stronger" or "Jack is in a constant state of half asleep" or "the editing didn't quite pull this off".

Following a bit of hide and seek, Christine sees the creature...take the pumpkin off?? And underneath is a normal, if albeit dead and rotting person??

Oh my god, it’s… … Yeah, I have no idea who this is.

Just as the creature is about to get Chris, it disappears, and because I'm enjoying this movie, I am going to give it the benefit of the doubt and assume these scenes should've run more concurrently, and it just plays weird. That's hard to pull off well, when something somewhere else is supposed to be affecting a different place a the same time.

The trio reunite, just in time for Jack to pass right back out, and the fight to begin again.

Brett lures the creature away while Chris tries to wake Jack, but he eventually gets pimp slapped out of the hay loft and down to the ground.

She begs Jack for forgiveness, but he 'comes to' with strange eyes and a demonic voice, likely speaking for the creature more than Jack. And I gotta say, I really REALLY wish we got a bit more lore with this movie, because there's stuff going on that we really never get clued into.

But fortunately, Brett's still alive, opens the door, and the morning light of November 1st spews in, banishing the demon. He got the idea from Jack saying they had to last until the morning light, but that makes me wonder how HE knew and aaaahhhh. Give me backstory and lore and fill this stuff in!

Sure, the movie COULD end there, but instead we jump ahead ANOTHER year, to another impending Halloween, as Jaqueline is being given a pumpkin...oh hey! Jack transitioned! Good for her!!

No no, this is someone else, with a wildly coincidental name, who has her own trauma from ANOTHER Halloween, and threatening to be another repeat of what we just watched.

So, I guess there is a vengeful spirit who singles out someone with a "Jack" related name, who just so happens to have a Halloween adjacent traumatic event from previous years, that cries out for vengeance??

TRISK ASSESSMENT

Video: It’s not BAD, but I do wish it looked better. The quality definitely leaves something to be desired.

Audio: Perfectly all right audio, very average.

Body Count: I’ll give the movie this, the movie does have a solid amount of carnage

1 - At about 5:40 minutes in and Deke gets his head gooshed in.

2 - Flashback to one of Angel's friends getting a sickle.

3 - Angel runs into another dead body.

4 - Daryl gets dragged off.

5 - Trent gets axed by the other hillbilly

6 - And then the black guy

7 - Who is then grabbed by the killer.

8 - Max gets killed.

9 - Laurie gets her face smooshed by a truck.

10 - "Paulie" gets hit by a train.

11 - Blonde gets a surprise when Josh's corpse drops from above.

12 - Paige gets shot by Christina

13 - Uncle Ray gets squished under tractor

14 - Jack's dad dies in flashbacks

15 - The creature hangs Billy on the axe.

16 - I guess you could say the creature dies thanks to it’s allergy to November sunlight

Best Corpse: C’mon, how do I not go with hanging Billy’s corpse on the hatchet? That’s great, and exactly what I wanted from it.

Blood Type - B: There’s a bit of good splashes here and there, but still fairly minimal. The mask for the monster is nicely creepy and distinct, while still being very pumpkin.

Drink Up! Whenever Jack goes to sleep.

Or if you caught a time when I misspelled Christine’s name and didn’t fix it in post.

Movie Review: This is another surprise, although less of one than Slimoids, but this was yet another movie I really enjoyed. It’s very well done for a smaller movie, even though the cast has that feel of a group of friends, the acting is pretty good, and the journey Jack takes is nicely done. There’s nothing about this movie that’s exactly unique but it remixes a lot of familiar ideas to make something that is very much its own thing. My main problems are that there’s a lot going on, and some stuff that could have been expanded upon gets lost in the shuffle. The plot doesn’t completely fall apart though, and you get enough to get by. I do wonder what the opening scene had to do with ANYthing, and while you eventually figure out that this is a yearly thing traveling around the country, I wish that had been more presented in the core of the movie itself, or just left out, because it doesn’t add much besides kicking the movie off with something interesting. Still, even though it takes a bit to get going, and those bits in the middle just kinda happen to move the plot along, there’s a lot going on here that’s well done enough, and its well made, that I still give this a four out of five pumpkin masks

Entertainment Value: It’s got a fair amount of camp, of a knowing variety, and it definitely has fun with some tropes. The kills are fun, and the movie knows when to be silly and when to be seriousness. The entertainment here isn’t coming from anything being so bad, or because you’re scratching your head, it’s just a simple, entertaining, movie. A delightful little hidden gem of a Halloween movie. Three out of five meat hooks.

Next time, it is my 13th anniversary of doing these movies, so we are throwing a bit of a killer party! Hope to see you there, in your best costume!