‘Anything for Jackson’ is the rare horror-comedy that gets both elements right
By: Eric Langberg
Tags: Film, Horror, Movie Review, Film Reviews, Movies

Anything for Jackson begins with a long, static scene of comfortable domesticity. Audrey (Sheila McCarthy) putters around the kitchen while her husband Henry (Julian Richings) complains over his breakfast about a pair of pants she’s hemmed for him. He thinks one leg is slightly shorter than the other, worried that he’ll be at the office “looking like some kind of rapper guy.” His wife reminds him gently that no one will mistake him for a “rapper guy.”

Then they notice something outside. “She’s early,” Henry says, aghast. They rush out the front door, and we watch, waiting, to figure out what’s happening. The fixed camera comes unmoored, pushing ever so slightly toward the door, shifting slightly to reframe the central hallway… as Henry and Audrey re-enter the house, dragging a screaming, sobbing pregnant woman behind them.

Henry (Julian Richings) and Audrey (Sheila McCarthy) discuss the latest wrinkles in their plan. / courtesy Shudder

This is Becker (Konstantina Mantelos), a patient of Henry’s. The father of her child is “long gone,” and she doesn’t really have any friends or family to look after her, either. This makes her the perfect victim for the older couple’s scheme: they need a pregnant woman, you see, in order to perform a “reverse exorcism.” Their grandson Jackson died in a car crash, and they need a vessel for him to inhabit in order to bring him back to life.

Unfortunately for everybody involved, Henry and Audrey have done something far worse, and have inadvertently invited something far more sinister than just the ghost of their dead grandson into their home. As the situation in their house spirals out of control, as ghosties and ghoulies rampage through the halls, they must figure out how far, exactly, they are willing to go for Jackson.

This is director Justin G. Dyck’s first horror film, but is far from his first feature; since 2014, he’s directed 27 made-for-TV films. The vast majority of his output is family-friendly fare with titles like Forest Fairies and Super Detention, alongside made-for-TV holiday movies like A Puppy for Christmas and Christmas With A Prince. Many of these were written by Keith Cooper, who also wrote Anything for Jackson. A pivot to genuinely-frightening horror seems like a strange career move for the duo, but the family dynamics in Anything for Jackson are its secret weapon, and Dyck captures them with ease. Aubrey and Henry are a completely believable couple, motivated by a genuine love for their grandson; they just also happen to be hapless Satanists who are messing with something far beyond their ability to control.

Henry (Julian Richings) takes an uncomfortable phone call / courtesy Shudder

Many horror-comedies lean too heavily in one direction or the other, either delivering too many laughs to be scary or else being so scary that people are afraid to laugh. Anything for Jackson is the rare film in the subgenre that gets both elements right; when it goes for scares, it’s frightening, and when it chooses instead to lean into the zany, madcap nature of the couple’s plot spiraling out of control, it’s blackly amusing. The specific nature of the ghosts in Anything for Jackson means a lot of the “scares” are jump-scares, but they feel earned because they are in service of a plot where it seems like anything could happen at any moment. There are also a number of genuinely nerve-wracking sequences that rely on unsettling imagery instead of just loud noises or gore — think contortionist horror — and they’re the most effective sequences in the film.

The whole thing is anchored by solid performances across the board, especially from Sheila McCarthy as a loving grandmother with sinister intentions. The always-reliable Julian Richings is capable of fury and pathos, alternately harrowing and pathetic depending on how well things are going for him at any given moment.

Anything for Jackson is yet another solid offering from Shudder, a streaming service that has grown into something essential for genre fans this year thanks to original films like Host, The Mortuary Collection, and Spiral. It also signals Dyck as a new voice in horror with a lot of promise; he has a number of films in the works with titles like Christmas in the Rockies, Christmas in the Wilds, and A Christmas Exchange, but here’s hoping he returns to horror soon. I’ll certainly be there if he does.