The House that Jack Built (4 Stars)

When I was a child my father worked as a night watchman at Little Aston Hall. He often took me with him to work. I can't remember when I started going with him, but he worked there until I was seven. When I was going to school it was probably only at the weekend, but before I started school it was more often.

My father had a small office in the cellar, on the left side of the building in the photo. There was a long corridor that ran the whole length of the building, and his room was the last room. He had a table, a chair and a sofa. I used to sleep on the sofa. He did his rounds about once an hour, and I didn't mind being left alone if I was still awake.

I was fine in the room itself, but I was scared in the corridor. The pipes that ran along the ceiling made banging noises. I never went to the other end of the corridor, neither with my father nor by myself. I only went as far as the stairs up to the ground floor. I had no idea what was at the other end of the corridor.

That's the situation that Jack (played by Matt Dillon) finds himself in. He's bought a small building in a deserted street in the centre of the town. He likes the isolation, because nobody notices when he drags dead bodies out of his truck at night. Over a period of 12 years he's killed more than 60 people, and he keeps the bodies in a walk-in freezer. It's art. He likes to set the bodies up in poses and take photos. But at the back of the building there's a locked door. He doesn't have a key, and he's left the door closed for 12 years.

Finally he breaks the door open. What does he find? There's a passage descending into Hell. He should have left the door shut. But wasn't that where he would be going anyway?

Like Lars Van Trier's last film, "Nymphomaniac", "The House that Jack Built" is a story about addiction. People can be addicted to killing, just as they can be addicted to sex. In the narrative we're led into the details of Jack's psyche. We can understand him, and we can almost sympathise with him.

But his final resting place is Hell. Unlike other people who die before they go to Hell, Jack has the privilege of entering Hell alive. Privilege or curse, the destination is the same.

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