Jack Be Nimble

1993, 1080hd

Johnny's comments:

Strangely the almost forgotten 1993 New Zealand movie Jack Be Nimble got a Bluray release recently.

Jack Be Nimble is a supernatural thriller where young kids Jack and Dora are forced into adoption after their mother has a breakdown when she finds out her husband is cheating on her. Jack and Dora are separated with Jack sent to a harsh rural family with four almost identical daughters and Dora is sent to a loving family. Things then take a turn for the worse for the both of them. Jack (the sadly deceased American actor Alexis Arquette) is horribly beaten with barbed wire by his adopted father (Tony Barry) while Dora (Sarah Smuts-Kennedy) is bullied at school and when she fights back, a bully pushes her off a wall, putting her into a coma. When she wakes up, Dora starts to hear voices and is able to talk to people telepathically. When Jack's parents find out he's failed, they lambast him but he fights back by unleashing something he worked on at school; a machine that hypnotises people. He manages to hypnotise his father and mother and gets them to kill themselves. He then runs away. Dora is frustrated by the non-stop voices she hears until she meets Teddy (Bruno Lawrence), who is also telepathic and helps her control the voices. Dora falls for him and they begin a relationship but she also starts to hear Jack's voice and convinces Teddy to help find him which they do. Dora is rapt Jack is back in her life but Jack is angry at the world and the hand that he has been dealt and he unveils his dark side when they go looking for their biological parents. Also, Jack's mother's spirit goes looking for Jack and uses her four daughters to exact revenge on him.

After starting as a depressing drama about two kids dealt a bad hand in life, there's a sudden sharp turn into the supernatural horror genre. And this turn makes the movie surprisingly watchable considering how it started. Jack is incredibly angry at life and some of his actions are quite nasty particularly one scene at a diner. Dora is also an interesting character and works well with the angry Jack but the movie doesn't give them the satisfaction of a happy ending that was supposed to happen when they are reunited. The movie reminded me a lot of Heavenly Creatures in that they both have a similar vibe about them although plot wise they veer off into different directions with this movie more fanciful. Also this movie is memorable for the amount of messy hair all the girls have. A surprising decent genre movie that'll hopefully get new life on Bluray.

Cecilia Nicholson and Sarah Smuts Kennedy film clip (collages below)

Kennedy

Nicholson