Lars von Trier made a bit of an American Psycho type film. We follow Jack, a man with an obsessive-compulsive disorder but mostly a serial killer. The combination leads to Jack cleaning up houses of his victims thoroughly and checking multiple times for remains of blood.
We have Jack telling his story to his psychopomp. We get flashes of his violent youth, brutal murders and the things that go around in his head. All this is told with cold humour.
The filming seems to have been hand-held, but not completely ‘Dogma 95 proof’. It is mostly the way of filming that takes the film down a bit.
“The House That Jack Built” is a descent film, especially when you start to figure out how the film is meant to be. It is not a masterpiece, but when thinking big about the films that I saw from Von Trier, it is probably one of his better.
