The House That Jack Built / YMMV

Alternative Character Interpretation: Did Verge bring Jack to the bottom of hell simply for “the tour” as he claims? Or was he so appalled by what he heard that he knowingly led Jack to a place where he’d doom himself?
Awesome Music:
- The film gets a lot of mileage of a piece by Bach as performed by Glenn Gould and David Bowie's Fame as its main musical motifs.
- The end credits music is also a great needle drop that's bound to get a chuckle out of the audience. And what's the song you wonder? Hit The Road Jack!
Catharsis Factor: After seeing all the horrific acts and grotesque murders Jack commits throughout the film, seeing him get sent to hell by the end of the film is really goddamn satisfying.
Complete Monster: Jack is a sadistic Serial Killer who views killing as an art form and wants fame. His murders spanning 12 years, Jack murders everyone from annoying strangers and police officers to even his girlfriend and best friend, in increasingly brutal ways. Jack even kills children, gunning down two young boys in front of their mother before executing the woman herself. Racking up a body count of well over 60, Jack tries to use a World War II-grade bullet to kill 6 men at once, and, when led down into hell to suffer for his crimes, Jack refuses to accept his punishment and remorselessly attempts an escape.
Funny Moments:
- Jack trying to bullshit his way into a woman's house, and doing an extremely bad job at it. First by Impersonating an Officer, then when she starts to see through him, he pretends to be an insurance agent.
- Following the above-mentioned scene, Jack ties the victim's body to the back of his van, dragging her for miles out in the open and creating a ridiculously long blood trail that gets washed away by the rain.
- While it really should not be funny and is one of the most horrific things Jack ever does, his creation of a Slasher Smile on Grumpy's face is so awful it Crosses the Line Twice and elicits laughter for at least some.
- As Jack falls into Hell, the film fades out to the credits. And what plays? This.
He Really Can Act: No one has ever doubted Matt Dillon's skills as an actor but regardless of one's opinion of the film, everyone can agree his performance is downright incredible in how much he shows what an evil and pretentious bastard Jack is.
Love to Hate The titular Jack is an horrendously atrocious excuse of a human being, but Matt Dillon puts a lot of work into making him entertaining and darkly humorous as well as frightening and creepy, giving Jack more characterizing dimensions than one would expect for someone like him. Critics and fans see Jack as a fantastic depiction of a serial killer whose brutality and heinousness as well as great acting allowed for a memorable presence and regarded highly among movie villain circles, much like fellow characters like Patrick Bateman.
Moral Event Horizon: Everything Jack does is deplorable on so many levels. However, the part where he murders a mother's two sons and then tops it off with doing surgery on one of the boy's faces to give him a disturbing smile really drives home just how utterly depraved and monstrous he is.
Nightmare Fuel:
- The murders of Grumpy and George. Even worse is that after killing them Jack forces their mother to have a picnic with their corpses, before killing her too. And if that wasn't enough, Jack decides to use taxidermy techniques in order to give Grumpy's corpse a permanent smile. The result is horrifying.
- The ending, while having a major Catharsis Factor, is still creepy on its own. Especially when Virgil explains that the high-pitched droning sound is white noise created from hundreds of souls suffering in eternal damnation crying out in unison. And Jack ends up joining them.
No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Thanks to the uproar that happened at Cannes, all the one-night theatrical screenings of Unrated Director's Cut were sold out quickly and made even more publicity when MPAA nearly sanctioned IFC for "violating" their rules. It's no wonder how this movie garnered some new fans for von Trier (see Newbie Boom in the Trivia section).
Spiritual Adaptation: Some fans of the director have viewed the film as an unofficial third installment to his USA: Land of Opportunities trilogy (of which consists of Dogville and Manderlay) due to the setting of the United States, it being a period piece and how it tackles a lot of controversial subjects much like those two films did (of which includes toxic masculinity, general apathy towards acts of cruelty committed publicly, rampant misogyny, gun control and more).

YMMV / The House That Jack Built

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