Jack Goes Home

By: Amos Lassen

"Jack Goes Home"
Learning the Facts
Amos Lassen
Thomas Dekker's new film, "Jack Goes Home" begins with Rory Culkin as Jack Duncan, a magazine editor looking forward to the birth of his child with his pregnant fiancée (Britt Robertson). However, he learns that a car crash has claimed the life of his father. His mother survived but we see by his reaction to this that there is something in his past that is plagues him.
He goes to his hometown, where he meets again his old friend Shanda (Daveigh Chase) and a mysterious young neighbor (Louis Hunter). He also reconnects with his mother (Lin Shaye) whose mental state in the wake of the tragedy makes her seem more likely to erupt in rage than in sorrow. When Jack goes up to the attic, he finds a videotape revealing a brother Jack had forgotten and an audiocassette left by his father with cryptic messages and intimations of child abuse. Shanda tells him that she had always thought that Jack's childhood home was haunted. Soon Jack begins to lose his hold on sanity.
Something about sleepwalking begins to happen and that along with family secrets coming to the fore do not add up.
Jack's mother Teresa suffers multiple physical and emotional wounds and Jack returns to his home in Denver, Colorado to take care for her during her recuperation. It is then that he begins uncovering long-buried secrets about his childhood kept from him by his parents.
Culkin manages to carry the film with a considerable amount of ease. He has been able to give Jack endearing qualities that cause us to easily empathize with his plight.
Nothing about the film is subtle and nothing is left to the imagination. Dekker emphasizes the themes of depravity, sexual abuse and depression.
The story is about loss and homecoming and in Jack we see man's ability to teeter at sanity's end.
Jack is the one who seems to be unraveling. Teresa approaches each day with a certain calmness, while Jack turns to best friend Shanda for support before he finds himself haunted by nightly sleepwalking fits and clues that lead to buried pasts, all of which suggest his life is nothing as believed.
Jack is haunted by outreaching arms and bloody creatures, beaten by his mother, kissed by his male neighbor, ruined by bad news from his wife and the real issue here is his discovery of gruesome family secrets. The horrors of each night are taken away by each day's light yet the demons in Jack's head are never restrained enough to follow.
"Jack Goes Home" is filled with emotional ravaging and even though it does not all come together, this is a fascinating film that could have been a much greater one.