Denmark, France, Germany · 2018
Rated R · 2h 32m
Director Lars von Trier
Starring Matt Dillon, Bruno Ganz, Uma Thurman, Siobhan Fallon Hogan
Genre Drama, Horror, Crime, Thriller
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In five episodes, Jack, a failed architect, engineer and vicious murderer, tells Verge the details of some of his most elaborately orchestrated crimes --- each of them a towering piece of art that defines his life's work as a serial killer for twelve years.
The Hollywood Reporter by David Rooney
Clearly, all this is designed to provoke adverse reactions. But what if instead of outrage and indignation, the response was a numb shrug? Don't get me wrong — The House That Jack Built is definitely something to see. But what's most surprising is that it's just as often inane as unsettling.
New York Magazine (Vulture) by Emily Yoshida
The film’s most offensive qualities have nothing to do with its grotesque violence and displays of human mutilation, but its terminal navel-gazing and reductive, borderline harmful ideas about art.
The House That Jack Built is an often-horrifying, sadistic dive into a psychotic internal monologue, with intellectual detours about the nature of art in the world today, and puts considerable effort into stimulating discomfort at key moments. If you meet the work on those terms, or at least accept the challenge of wrestling with impeccable filmmaking that dances across moral barriers, it’s also possibly brilliant.
The Film Stage by Giovanni Marchini Camia
Whether there’s any worth to be found in The House That Jack Built will depend on the viewer’s interest in delving deep into von Trier’s tortured psyche. It’s unlikely anyone will empathize with him and it’s certain many will find the film execrable, but those willing to indulge his excess are offered a wealth of fascinating material.
Perhaps The House That Jack Built is the kind of film you make when you fervently want someone to stop you, to save you from yourself and the demons of your worst nature. Perhaps, this time, we should oblige.
After all is said and done, ‘The House that Lars Built’ is an impressive construction for an obnoxious purpose. In fact, the best criticism comes from Talking Heads and their song Psycho Killer: “You’re talking a lot but you’re not really saying anything.”
The Guardian by Peter Bradshaw
It is an ordeal of gruesomeness and tiresomeness that was every bit as exasperating as I had feared.
The Telegraph by Robbie Collin
It is two and a half hours of self-reflexive torture porn with an entire McDonald’s warehouse of chips on its shoulder, and a handful of genuinely provocative ideas which, exasperatingly, go nowhere much.
The film becomes an even broader consideration of individual fascinations and follies, of ways of responding to art without the boundaries of morality and reason.
Screen International by Tim Grierson
Wielding the same grim power as his most obsessive, tormented work, Jack is deeply embedded within its creator’s psyche, and while the results may be cathartic for him, the movie is only intermittently arresting for the rest of us.
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