Customer Reviews

Jack O'Lantern

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

The clear winner, absolutely the worst horror movie I have ever seen. So that makes the fact that Amazon is ordering more REALLY scary, and look at the other link. . you can add this to a wedding registry. (gee guys, I'd sure love that "Jack O Lantern" movie for my own collection, forget the bottles of wine or the trip to Cancun)

The cover art and trailer looked promising.. . the tag line .
"One year after a deadly car accident, Jack returns home and tries to get past the recurring nightmares that haunt him. As his deadly visions become a reality, Jack soon realizes that each new nightmare is uncovering details of the accident that he had forgotten and someone is using him to
exact a deadly vengeance"

This is a HOME MOVIE! Seriously, it looks to be shot on a Best Buy camcorder with actors rounded up from the nearest McDonalds.

It opens with the words "Halloween" on the screen while the three boys running out of gas in the boonies are clearly being filmed in what was the middle of summer, as far as vegetation, lighting and the chorus of cicadas as the sun went down.

The first part of the movie had absolutely no semblance to the plot tag. These three young people, the sterotypical good guy, black guy, and overweight fun guy, break down after leaving the main roadway onto dirt roads in search of a gas station. It morphs into a deliverance type plot with a slow witted inbred with an "ax to grind", his face hidden by a hat (run for your lives it's Wilson from Home Improvement!)

The next scene where some blond on the run from the monster runs into the boys is such a monument to bad acting, it is almost worth the rental just to watch that scene alone. "Wilson" is soon done in by the real movie monster. . which after seeing, all I can say is bwah ha ha ha hahahahahahahahahahaa. The Petco dog sock puppet would have been scarier.

The film itself has no semblance of a cohesive plot, with
completely unexplainable and random threads tossed in with wild abandon. After the seemingly unrelated opening we get to a bit about a car accident and another sterotype is added, this time the religious figure who has to be the worst actor ever fill the screen.

The movie ends abruptly, never pulling any of the plot pieces together, and ending seemingly only for the reason that the sun came up, but not before they could throw in a lame brained "maybe there will be a sequel" scene that defies credulity.

JACK O'LANTERN may be one of the worst horror movies made in the past twenty years. The film opens with three good old boys in a pickup truck on Halloween evening in Mississippi. They encounter a couple of rednecks who are obviously cannibals, and also a screaming blonde who says these guys killed a bunch of her friends, and of course, the three good old boys get it too, but so do the killers by some unseen force.
Flash forward to a year and lo and behold, this whole setup has nothing to do with the rest of this lamely made fiasco. A teenage boy who looks all of 27 is mute as a result of an auto accident which killed his father. Soon some jackolanterned killer starts wiping out his friends, and is it this lamebrained kid named Jack or what? Forcing a totally unconvincing reason for these revenge killings does little to validate the plot. The acting in this movie is awful; they even have one scene where they switched victims because one of the actresses (used loosely) wasn't available to finish the movie, so they just switched who got killed...but they don't show the audience who gets killed. This is just a waste of time, folks.

this movie will keep you somewhat entertained, but it goes from one extreme to the other. There is some excellent editing for the horror genre, but then there is general editing that is just awful. There is some gore and some well-crafted chilling visuals, but you will never jump out of your seat. Acting is mostly not very good.

As for the plot, it's basically I Know What You Did Last Summer meets Jack-O (anyone remember that film?). The "killer" is a somewhat creepier looking version of Jack-O. The real problem lies in the lack of explanation for anything that is happening. The reasons for the killings is explained at the end--but not who Jack O Lantern is or why he manifests himself. You're sort of left to draw your own conclusions. And the way he is destroyed at the end is really anti-climactic. Also, there's an intro to the movie that is really detached from the rest of the film, and doesn't connect at all.

Honestly, there's no predicting whether you will like this movie or not. At this price, I definitely suggest you rent it first to decide if it's worthy of your horror collection.

I went out this morning and rented Jack O Lantern. I just happened to see a review here on Amazon written on the 14th and was wondering how this person could write a review on a film that was not released until today. I know it was not available for viewing on line. Probably some disgruntled actor or filmmaker. Anyhow, here is an unbiased take on this creepy little film. I was hesitant to rent it at first because I thought it might be another sucky indie horror film but it had the Lions Gate tag on it so I took the chance and was pleasantly surprised. In fact the acting was quite good and the death scenes rocked, I was especially freaked out by the truck scene. How someone could find this film boring is beyond me because it was anything but boring. 5 or 6 people bite the dust in the first 5 minutes. WOW! That was a surprise. The lead actor who played Jack pulled it off quite nicely and really brought the character to life. By no means is this a million dollar movie but then neither was Halloween. I really enjoyed this film and I plan on adding it to my collection, I thought it was well shot, well directed, and I loved the score. Want to jump out of your seat, then watch Jack O Lantern. Sure to become a cult favorite.

The movie starts out with a lot of promise. A truck runs out of gas and one guy goes to get help, while his two buds stay behind and get stone. While they are enjoying their buzz, a blond girl named Angel, wearing a top two sizes too small, frantically attempts to start their truck. When she finds out there is no gas she warns them to stay away from the house down the road, and all her friends were dead. The guys do the math and go after their missing friend in one direction, while the girl takes off in another only to end up at the place she was running away from. Meanwhile, the killers are bashing people with a hammer while an unseen creature is killing the killers. The movie starts to get good when all of a sudden you realize all the real actors are killed off and they flash a sign "one year later."

In that year's time a town has grown up around this place and they now have cell phone capability. At this point the movie gets cheap. We do get to see the monster, which uses high tech 1910 special effects known as " big cheap rubber mask." How cheap were they? They wouldn't spend the extra $500 to have a woman do the token topless shower scene, so they had a guy do it. The high school girls are well into their 20's. They got such a good deal on the "one year later" sign they used it again at the end in hopes of a sequel.

The DVD cover fooled me. It looked like a stylish horror film with a storyline like MEMENTO or THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT.

NOT!

This is a HOME MOVIE! Seriously, it looks to be shot on a consumer camcorder, with the usual flat lighting. The sound isn't that great either.

The acting ranges from barely acceptible to really bad. I wonder if anyone from this cast of unknowns had any training? They pause between lines (non-actors can get self-conscious before a camera), or chew the scenary, or talk with their hands.

The script is full of banal chatter and overlong shots. Lots of "Hey there, how's it going?" "Pretty good." "All right. I'll be seeing you." "Okay then."

I realize that much effort goes into even a home movie, but it's unfair to sell such amateaurish nonsense as a professional film. Hell, it's a ripoff.

It's not enough to put in the effort of a shoot. CAST TRAINED ACTORS! I realize this film was shot in suburban Georgia (which for some unexplained reason, locates its story in suburban North Carolina), but please make the effort to drive to Atlanta, where I'm sure there's trained SAG actors.

And LEARN SCRIPTWRITING. Even beginner students should be able to avoid pointless padding and banal chit-chat.

The story, as far as it goes, borrows from PUMPKINHEAD. A pumpkin-headed monster takes revenge on some college kids who were responsible for killing a man in a traffic accident. The monster makeup isn't that bad. But the writing and acting and videography are amateurish.

Okay, Im not Crazy, I Understand, how Poorly this movie was produced, but hey, It was a Very Low Budget To No Budget Movie, and they Tried Their Best. I am a Big Fan of Cheesy Low Budget B Movies, and I Really Liked This one. It is great to watch this movie closer to halloween, to put you in the Spirit! Really, the only thing wrong with this movie, is the Camera, YOu can tell it was shot with a very Cheap Camera. If they had a Good Hollywood Camera, and Better Actor's. Now, some of the Actor's were Okay, But A Couple were terrible. But those thing's can be easily looked over, if you Don't think about it, and just watch the movie. It is so Much Fun, and You can get some Cheap Scares. I think that it's so stupid, when someone gives this movie Bad Reviews, for being "Too Cheesy" Look, By looking at the case, you can tell, that it's no freakin Blockbuster. I Mean, what are people expecting, A James Cameron MAsterpiece?? Just Have FUn with the movie, and love it for what it is. And another thing, The Pumpkin Killer Thing, was Quite Creepy looking.

Just a quick side-note. I love bad horror films. I love cheesy-bad horror films. And one of the best parts about seeing a bad film is coming here to Amazon to read the reviews. I got a good laugh out of a couple of the reviews posted here....the fact that you can add the "Jack O'Lantern" DVD to your wedding registry is GREAT! I never would have noticed that if it weren't pointed out in a review! I want to get divorced and remarried just so I can register a ton of crappy movies for me and my future wife!
Okay onto the movie. Maybe it's just me, but I enjoyed this film. Sure it's grade Z stuff, with bad acting, goofy special effects, and has the production values of your standard home movies, but I enjoyed it. Of course I only paid $1.99 for it at Blockbuster, so I felt I got my money's worth. And while the story is hardly original, "Wrong Turn" meets "Pumpkinhead" meets "I Know What You Did Last Summer", it was kind of fun. It's nonsense, but it's fun nonsense. Like how "Jack" chases several victims around the Georgian suburbs in broad daylight, but we later learn, sunlight may be Jack's Achilles heel? And "Jack" is a pretty impressive looking monster....until he steps out of the shadows. When we finally see "Jack" in full lighting you can't help but chuckle. The acting is awful for sure, but I gotta say I couldn't do any better, and it's about on par with what you would expect from an indy horror flick shot in Georgia.
The "Behind the Screams" extra is great. Everyone is so excited and talking about "Jack O'Lantern" as though it's an A-List film. But it does offer a neat peak into the world of indy films. I don't think I would recommend "Jack O'Lantern" to anyone wanting a truly scary flick, but if you like your horror with no production values, and served with a heaping load of cheese, then you might like this movie.
And by the way, for those of you who think the is the "worst horror movie ever!", I defy you to sit through "The Last Slumber Party".

I had marginal hopes for this one. It looked like it would have the classic horror elements but with a slightly new spin. A few minutes into the movie I realized I was wrong.
"What went wrong?", you ask. Well, to start with the prologue deals with some guys being pursued by cannibalistic rednecks. This has nothing to do with the rest of the movie, or if it does it was during one of the moments towards the end where I began to doze off. Sad thing is I was wide awake before I started watching.
The main plot deals with your basic 26 year old "teenager", named Jack, who has been left seemingly brain damaged after a car accident that also took the life of his father. The guilty parties start getting killed off by a monster with a pumpkin head(though not "Pumpkinhead", that movie was pretty good). After each killing, Jack seems to become more normal.
Although the plotline's derivative, this still could have been a decent movie. Any chances of that happening are foiled by the hack writing, bad acting, and amateurish direction. Not to mention the leaden pacing. The movie's boring, bottom line.
The DVD contains a "making of" featurette that's much better than the film itself. The filmmakers and actors are enthusiastic about the film in the featurette which leads me to believe none of them had seen the finished product before they were interviewed.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is one to avoid.

I rented Jack O lantern today and found it to be a relly creative film with lots of scary scenes, and some very shocking killing scenes. I would not recommend this for kids, as the killing scenes are pretty graphic, one in particular. The acting is pretty good, and the music is great. The effects are really cool and the monster is different from anything I've ever seen. I figured he would be some scarecrow, but he is actually pretty cool looking. Be aware though that this is not a big budget horror film it is obviously an indie horror flick, but those are my favorites. I have seen some really bad Indie horror films in the past couple of years, but I was quite happy with this one. I guess I will buy it one day when the price comes down and add it to my hundreds of other horror DVD's.
Don