Jack Be Nimble (1993)

Abandoned by their parents as children, Dora and Jack are put up for adoption. Dora (Sarah Smuts-Kennedy) goes to an upper class couple full of love for their new daughter and grows up stably yet unhappy. Jack (Alexis Arquette) is taken in by a couple of abusive country bumpkins with four evil daughters and he is constantly tormented. Both of their lives become unbearable when Dora is pushed off a cliff but a bully at school and Jack is whipped with barbed wire (!) by his adopted father.

When Dora wakes from a short coma, she discovers that she has developed psychic powers and her connection to Jack is even stronger than ever. With the help of her lover and fellow clairvoyant Teddy (Bruno Lawrence), Dora finds Jack but all is not well. In his spare time, Jack builds a machine that hypnotizes people which he uses to get his evil parents to kill themselves. The brother and sister track down their real parents to find out why they were sent to the orphanage. But this ain’t no episode of “The Locator” especially since Jack is now violently psychotic and his four evil sisters are hot on he and Dora’s trail.

Is it okay to be afraid of New Zealanders? The answer is yes. Once again I underestimated a flick from that distant and wonderful place and once again I was totally blown away. Director Garth Maxwell creates a dark and feverish fairy tale world where everyone is completely insane. Jack Be Nimble is both dreamy and nightmarish with exquisitely fluid camerawork and moments of surreal and bloody glory. My only complaint about the film is that the melodrama overtakes the story in some scenes and it gets a little embarrassing to watch as the actors scream and cry at each other.

The always reliable Bruno Lawrence (The Quiet Earth, Death Warmed Up) is in the cast and is very good as Teddy, Dora’s lover (and overly smug psychic) who probably shouldn’t have lent her his car. Alexis Arquette (Bride of Chucky) is awesome as Jack, the brooding, sexy (ooh, someone’s got a man-crush (on someone who used to be a man)) and frightening son of a bitch who has been pushed too close to the edge and can never come back. I really like Sarah Smuts-Kennedy. This odd actress puts everything into her performance of a woman haunted by her past and (as an added bonus) the voices of the dead and I couldn’t help but be fascinated.

While not a perfect film, Jack Be Nimble is a truly original and hypnotic masterpiece of New Zealand horror cinema and is easily one of the strangest films I’ve ever seen. Every character is suffering in his or her own way and either pain or death (or both) is always just around the corner. This film also contains that indescribably Kiwi thing. It’s an aura of quirky madness and total unpredictability even when you’re pretty sure you think you know what’s coming next.

“Do you hear me? You know me. I’m in your head. Drifting in the same sea, you and I, drowning together.”