‘House That Jack Built’ Trailer: Matt Dillon Is A Maniac Serial Killer

The director’s statement for “The House That Jack Built” is simple. “For many years I’ve made films about good women, now I did a film about an evil man.” As brutally provocative as the films of Lars von Trier often are, it seems like the Danish writer/director’s divisive output is at constant risk of being upstaged by the off-screen controversy surrounding the man himself.

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Just take his upcoming psychological horror-thriller “The House That Jack Built.” Experience tells us that a serial killer film from the director of such traumatizing pictures as “Antichrist” and “Dancer in the Dark” is all but guaranteed to make for a punishing watch, for better or worse. Nonetheless, the discourse around this work has so far been dominated by the subject of von Trier’s return to the Cannes Film Festival after seven years of banishment following his scandalous comments about Hitler at a 2011 press conference.

That being said, expect much fuss to be made about the new feature when it premieres out of competition. The film stars a murderous Matt Dillon as the titular Jack, one of the few named characters in a cast list that also includes Uma Thurman as the ominously labeled ‘Lady 1.’ Here’s the official synopsis:

U.S.A. in the 1970s. We follow the highly intelligent Jack through 5 incidents and are introduced to the murders that define Jack’s development as a serial killer. We experience the story from Jack’s point of view. He views each murder as an artwork in itself, even though his dysfunction gives him problems in the outside world.

Despite the fact that the final and inevitable police intervention is drawing ever near (which both provokes and puts pressure on Jack) he is – contrary to all logic – set on taking greater and greater chances. The goal is the ultimate artwork: A collection of all his killings manifested in a House that he builds. Along the way we experience Jack’s descriptions of his personal condition, problems and thoughts through a recurring conversation with the unknown Verge – a grotesque mixture of sophistry mixed with an almost childlike self-pity and in-depth explanations of, for Jack, dangerous and difficult maneuvers.

Dillon and Thurman will appear alongside Riley Keough, Bruno Ganz, Siobhan Fallon Hogan, Sofie Gråbøl, Jeremy Davies, and Ed Speleers. “The House That Jack Built” premieres May 14^th at Cannes, with IFC Films handling the subsequent U.S. release later this year.