(1993)
2.5
Brian J. Dillard
This dark little fairy tale packs plenty of ideas and lots of gorgeously disturbing images into 90 modestly budgeted, nouveau gothic minutes. Alexis Arquette takes a welcome break from his more flamboyant roles as the seethingly alienated title character, while Sarah Smuts-Kennedy recalls Cate Blanchett in the mixture of fragility and steeliness she brings to her role as Jack's sweet but tortured sister Dora. The entire ensemble shines, from Brenda Simmons as Dora's blind, defeated, conscience-plagued adoptive mother to the many, many actresses who play Jack's stepsisters at various ages. It's Jackie Gilmore's art direction and Donald Duncan's cinematography, however, that transform the film from a fantasy melodrama into a memorable fable. Their moody visuals and sordidly magical realist tone perfectly complement the high-pitched script, which was co-written by first-time feature director Garth Maxwell. From the fabulously baroque contraption Jack builds out of metal scraps and uses to hypnotize his tormentors to the sight of his wicked stepsiblings stalking the back roads of New Zealand in an antique truck like some mytho-industrial monster, Jack Be Nimble reinvigorates gothic stereotypes with an inventiveness that never strays into postmodern pastiche. Superior sound editing brings the horror of Dora's telepathy to life with a torrent of babbling voices that provide a disturbing counterpoint to the film's stark tableaux. From its Season of the Witch-esque opening montage to the languid coda that brings things to a hopeful close, Jack Be Nimble is one genre exercise whose low budget doesn't translate into a paucity of memorable ideas, characters, images, or sounds.
Jack Be Nimble on AllMovie
Jack Be Nimble (1993)
