When a film goes through the hype machine by the online community it’s not uncommon that when you finally see it, expecting it to be a small masterpiece, it let’s you down in some way. It has happened to me before, festival favorites like Behind The Mask and Hatchet, were severely hyped and both let me down, one more than the other.
Sadly this happened to Jack Brooks Monster Slayer for me as well.
Jack Brooks is an angry, angry boy. After seeing his family slaughtered by a monster when he was a young boy he has been letting his anger get the better of him causing violent outburst and physical violence on objects and bystanders.
By day he works as a plumber, goes to therapy and a night class in chemistry for some reason. It’s there where he’s invited to his professor’s house to fix a faulty pipe and unwittingly opens up a hole in the ground hiding an evil artifact after the job goes to shit. After digging up the artifact, a black heart in this case, in a state of possession the professor promptly chows down on the pulsating muscle pump, Jason Goes To Hell style.
This leads to a massive appetite and general lunacy in his class, which he still goes to even though he’s possessed by a demon. All this comes to a goo filled end when the monster shows its true face and starts to possess the students while Brooks fights for his life. What follows is basically an half an hour of screaming, slime and demons performing fisticuffs with our hero.
Even though it sounds like a good time it fell flat for me and looked like they were trying a bit too hard to be a cult film. Cult films are made by accident and you can’t go out and make a “Cult” film expecting it to be an instant classic. It also felt that Jon Knautz and Trevor Matthews were hoping to fill the shoes left behind by the man God Bruce Campbell by making another blue collar monster ass kicker. It just doesn’t work like that.
The performances were all right, Matthews was sort of likeable while Robert Englund hammed it up to eleven in a good way. James A. Woods however was really good as the disgustingly sensitive “bro” John who is in Brooks’ class and hitting on his annoying girlfriend.
The main problem with this movie is the script with wafer thin plot blotted with weak character moments. Now that has never stood in the way of a cracking good time with a horror film but what usually make up for a poor script in other films is also lacking here sadly.
The good thing about the film is the lack of CGI and the smorgasbord of proper foam latex goodness and goo. The grue and gore flows freely and it was refreshing to see 80’s style effects put to good use. Sadly that wasn’t enough to win me over.
A nice try but not quite there.
Jack Brooks Monster Slayer screens again on the 23rd at the Fantastic Film Festival.
I have to add - The movie I feel has been most overhyped is JCVD. Decent but pointless.