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6 Degrees Entertainment

The Jack in the Box: Awakening
(Matt McClure, Mollie Hindle, James Swanton, Nicola Wright, et al / DVD / NR / 2022 / 4Digital Media)

Overview: Terminally ill heiress Olga Marsdale acquires a mysterious gothic box containing a captured demon - Jack. The powerful entity within makes a deadly deal with Olga and her devoted son Edgar - deliver six victims to Jack and Olga will live.

They trap several unsuspecting victims for him within the vast crumbling mansion, but can they deliver all six before it is too late? Or will Amy, the young and innocent woman recently hired to look after the estate turn out to be more than a match for both the family and the Jack?

DVD Verdict: These supernatural Jack in the Box movies are, without a shadow of a doubt, what nightmares are made of! The underlying score is hauntingly good, the sound effects as good as they get (for a B-movie), and the actual Jack (he of the box) with its evil, creepy eyes, basically a demon clown with scary, excellently constructed make-up, all come together to ensure you will have a horribly restful night after watching!

As aforementioned, a terminally ill heiress Olga Marsdale (Nicola Wright, herself wearing some aged make up and looking the part perfectly) acquires a mysterious gothic box containing a captured demon - Jack.

The trouble is, well, aside from curiosity, is that together with a collection of supernatural rules that govern it - such as if you pop it open you give the demon associated with it access to our world and it either goes on a killing spree or has you do its dirty work for it - once open the powerful entity within makes a deadly deal with Olga and her devoted son Edgar (Matt McClure) - to deliver six victims to Jack (James Swanton) and Olga will live.

Now wholly devoted to this rather disturbing-looking clown within the box that seems to appear at will - whether you have cranked the toy box handle or not - the pair trap several unsuspecting victims for him within the vast crumbling mansion.

The trouble is, can they deliver all six before it is too late? Or will Amy (Mollie Hindle), the young and innocent woman recently hired to look after the estate turn out to be more than a match for both the family and the Jack?

The answers are all revealed as the movie continues on, but along the way the clown has some devilish fun with these two; perhaps, in truth, a little bit too much fun, given that he wants them to actually finish the trial!

On an interesting side note, in life the whole Jack in the Box creation apparently has French origins and the French refer to them as diable en boîte (which translates as devil in a box)!

In closing, The Jack in the Box: Awakening might well be a low budget, horror B-movie, but at its core is an emotional journey, complete with backstory of both the human occupants and of the gruesome clown itself, which definitely add to the watchability of the film.

Chock-full of some very effective sequences of tension building too, the only thing I would say that I wish they had shown more of was the kills! They were, for the most part, done off camera (due to budget constraints, one assumes) and it would have been nice to see them within a horror movie that goes as far as this one tries to. This is a Widescreen Presentation (2.39:1) enhanced for 16x9 TVs.

Official Trailer

www.4DigitalMedia.com





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