I love 80's movies. I like how the stories unfold, the characters are developed, and the endings are complete. Since Jackals was set in the 80's and had a great plotline, I wish they would have done a better job of filling in some of those blanks. I've seen movie quality decline so much over the years that it's a genuine shame to me when something could have been so very good with more storyline or character development. All the right ingredients are there, but there are too many chefs in the kitchen or the wrong one at the stove. Nowadays, plots that sound promising so often take wrong turns or hit dead ends...movies based on books are dumbed down to the lowest common audience denominator...and scenes are abruptly shortened that once would have been fully explored.
I get it. Time has moved on and people and their attention spans have changed. Just look at TV show theme songs, for example. There were some great theme songs for TV shows for years. The theme song was considered an important part of the show because it was recognizable, memorable, and created a sensory/auditory bond (similar to an aroma associated with a particular favorite food item). Theme songs were a little too long at times and they tended to be shortened across the life of a series, but they were also subconsciously comforting and engaging because you were readied for what came next. Now, you usually see the title of a show flashed on the screen with a couple of notes of music (if that). It's comical for the most part. Everybody's too busy to sit around waiting for theme songs to play and TV time costs too much and viewers might flip the channel during a song, of course. I say all this to sort of explain why Jackals both haunts and frustrates me.
I rented Jackals from Redbox and it sounded very interesting, not to mention the cover art was fascinatingly chilling. The movie has been described by many others here, so I don't need to dissect a play-by-play. I'll just say that the situations were believable, but the depths left unexplored left me longing for more. Maybe it was designed to do so, but I want a movie dinner, not a movie appetizer, when a movie has such promise.
It would have been so much more chilling and fulfilling to see some of the demise of the son after he joined the cult and pledged his allegiance to their sinister leader. HOW does someone go from being rebellious and miserable in life, but having a decent family, to joining forces with a murderous cult that personally slaughters their own loved ones? Imagination is a great device, but not if it's an unnecessary substitute for rich character or plot development.
Some have criticized the behavior of the family and, especially, the Marine deprogrammer because they were apparently not prepared for the savagery and lengths the cult would go to to retrieve their member, but who would have been back in the 80's?
I can even understand how the son was rabidly devoted to the cult for most of the movie because he'd have to be to stomach what they do. I think he cracked a bit when his parents went to save his brother one by one and he knew what his cult would do to them. I think he cracked after he saw the body of a cult member fall to the floor dead before him. I wish the cracking had included more emotion, instead of mostly words, excess blinking, and non-violent interaction, but that was probably a realistic version of how a person would act in real life. Telling his ex to take their daughter and run out the back during his few moments of clarity before he returned to the cult was about all he could do, short of running with them if he wasn't going to fight the cult or kill them as the cult would expect him to do. But, I still don't know WHY he made the choice he did. Did he want to flee with them in that moment, but he knew they would all be killed so he returned to the cult as a sacrifice hoping they wouldn't find his ex and daughter? Did he simply say a final goodbye to them hoping they would get away before returning to the cult? I don't think he set a trap for them, as some have said, because he wouldn't have let them get away to begin with.
And that is why the ending sucks. We knew there were cult members everywhere, so they would have been guarding the back. We knew it'd be iffy if his ex and daughter made it, but the Jackals might have been called off once he walked out of the cabin. When the Jackal shows up in the headlights behind her, is one of their own vehicles coming down the road? Or, do the headlights signal salvation in the form of a good Samaritan? Is the Jackal frozen because he's going to kill the driver and take the girl and her daughter in the next few moments or is the Jackal frozen because he's a few moments too late? Knowing what we do about the ferocity and relentlessness of the Jackals, though, there is not much hope that she and her daughter survived. Evil took everything with no remorse in the end. The son kissed the hand of and bowed down to the leader who authorized the torturous slaughter of his parents and brother...and, we realize there will never again be anyone on the face of the earth who loves him enough to try to save him. His fate is essentially sealed.
He cared enough not to kill his ex and their daughter, but not enough to save them or himself. She should have gotten away and lived to fight another day because the horrible implication (when you think it through based on the footage at the beginning) is that she and her daughter will be brought back to the son to be murdered by him. It will be his responsibility to seal his allegiance to the cult forever, as others had to seemingly do. The leader will demand that he has no safe haven to return to and no one else to care about in this world but them, especially after being taken.
With such a disturbing and horrific ending imagined to come, I NEEDED more development of the son. He was fascinating based on his convincing performance and the potential inherent in his character. Someone making the life choices he did before being put in such extreme circumstances and forced to choose between two universes would be very complex and fractured. I would have loved to see/understand more of that...which takes me back to wanting more development of his character pre-kidnapping. Was the only redeeming moment in all the horror his family experienced just the few minutes when he said goodbye to his ex and their daughter? Did everything in his heart and mind before and after those moments belong to the cult and everyone sacrificed themselves just for THAT? Would he really be able to live with that? Or, will he just sink back into the darkness with no regrets? Yes, this is a horror movie, but when you have great material, use it. People are not made of paper and images on a screen. People who join murderous cults, yet have families who love them, are fighting a battle of good vs. evil. This storyline was too real and too easy to try on for size for it to have such an abrupt and shockingly dark ending.
I get it. Time has moved on and people and their attention spans have changed. Just look at TV show theme songs, for example. There were some great theme songs for TV shows for years. The theme song was considered an important part of the show because it was recognizable, memorable, and created a sensory/auditory bond (similar to an aroma associated with a particular favorite food item). Theme songs were a little too long at times and they tended to be shortened across the life of a series, but they were also subconsciously comforting and engaging because you were readied for what came next. Now, you usually see the title of a show flashed on the screen with a couple of notes of music (if that). It's comical for the most part. Everybody's too busy to sit around waiting for theme songs to play and TV time costs too much and viewers might flip the channel during a song, of course. I say all this to sort of explain why Jackals both haunts and frustrates me.
I rented Jackals from Redbox and it sounded very interesting, not to mention the cover art was fascinatingly chilling. The movie has been described by many others here, so I don't need to dissect a play-by-play. I'll just say that the situations were believable, but the depths left unexplored left me longing for more. Maybe it was designed to do so, but I want a movie dinner, not a movie appetizer, when a movie has such promise.
It would have been so much more chilling and fulfilling to see some of the demise of the son after he joined the cult and pledged his allegiance to their sinister leader. HOW does someone go from being rebellious and miserable in life, but having a decent family, to joining forces with a murderous cult that personally slaughters their own loved ones? Imagination is a great device, but not if it's an unnecessary substitute for rich character or plot development.
Some have criticized the behavior of the family and, especially, the Marine deprogrammer because they were apparently not prepared for the savagery and lengths the cult would go to to retrieve their member, but who would have been back in the 80's?
I can even understand how the son was rabidly devoted to the cult for most of the movie because he'd have to be to stomach what they do. I think he cracked a bit when his parents went to save his brother one by one and he knew what his cult would do to them. I think he cracked after he saw the body of a cult member fall to the floor dead before him. I wish the cracking had included more emotion, instead of mostly words, excess blinking, and non-violent interaction, but that was probably a realistic version of how a person would act in real life. Telling his ex to take their daughter and run out the back during his few moments of clarity before he returned to the cult was about all he could do, short of running with them if he wasn't going to fight the cult or kill them as the cult would expect him to do. But, I still don't know WHY he made the choice he did. Did he want to flee with them in that moment, but he knew they would all be killed so he returned to the cult as a sacrifice hoping they wouldn't find his ex and daughter? Did he simply say a final goodbye to them hoping they would get away before returning to the cult? I don't think he set a trap for them, as some have said, because he wouldn't have let them get away to begin with.
And that is why the ending sucks. We knew there were cult members everywhere, so they would have been guarding the back. We knew it'd be iffy if his ex and daughter made it, but the Jackals might have been called off once he walked out of the cabin. When the Jackal shows up in the headlights behind her, is one of their own vehicles coming down the road? Or, do the headlights signal salvation in the form of a good Samaritan? Is the Jackal frozen because he's going to kill the driver and take the girl and her daughter in the next few moments or is the Jackal frozen because he's a few moments too late? Knowing what we do about the ferocity and relentlessness of the Jackals, though, there is not much hope that she and her daughter survived. Evil took everything with no remorse in the end. The son kissed the hand of and bowed down to the leader who authorized the torturous slaughter of his parents and brother...and, we realize there will never again be anyone on the face of the earth who loves him enough to try to save him. His fate is essentially sealed.
He cared enough not to kill his ex and their daughter, but not enough to save them or himself. She should have gotten away and lived to fight another day because the horrible implication (when you think it through based on the footage at the beginning) is that she and her daughter will be brought back to the son to be murdered by him. It will be his responsibility to seal his allegiance to the cult forever, as others had to seemingly do. The leader will demand that he has no safe haven to return to and no one else to care about in this world but them, especially after being taken.
With such a disturbing and horrific ending imagined to come, I NEEDED more development of the son. He was fascinating based on his convincing performance and the potential inherent in his character. Someone making the life choices he did before being put in such extreme circumstances and forced to choose between two universes would be very complex and fractured. I would have loved to see/understand more of that...which takes me back to wanting more development of his character pre-kidnapping. Was the only redeeming moment in all the horror his family experienced just the few minutes when he said goodbye to his ex and their daughter? Did everything in his heart and mind before and after those moments belong to the cult and everyone sacrificed themselves just for THAT? Would he really be able to live with that? Or, will he just sink back into the darkness with no regrets? Yes, this is a horror movie, but when you have great material, use it. People are not made of paper and images on a screen. People who join murderous cults, yet have families who love them, are fighting a battle of good vs. evil. This storyline was too real and too easy to try on for size for it to have such an abrupt and shockingly dark ending.