“The House That Jack Built” is a car accident: you want to look at the wreck, but you know it’s going to be unsightly. With any Lars von Trier movie, this is a constant debate in deciding to watch one of his movies. The plots are captivating, but you know it’s going to be graphic, controversial and psychological.  

His latest work, released on video, on demand and at select theaters Dec. 14 truly depicts his nihilistic personality while sarcastically touching on the controversy he’s been involved with in the media pertaining to his Nazi sympathy and misogyny. 

While at the Cannes Film Festival in 2011 for his movie “Melancholia,” von Trier “joked” about understanding Hitler and even called himself a Nazi because of his German roots. The festival deemed him as a persona non-grata with a seven-year ban. His response was footage from concentration camps that appeared in “The House that Jack Built” when it was first played at the 2018 Cannes festival. 

At the viewing in June, allegedly 100 people walked out of the showing since viewers were so disturbed by his new movie. 

von Trier’s films portray a constant theme of misogyny. It is so persistent and draws away from the plot and scenes, specifically in his most recent film; it shows only females being murdered and even the narrator, Bruno Ganz, brings up the concept. 

The movie is so graphic that U.S. laws made the movie have two different versions: the unrated director’s cut and the R-rated version which cuts out five minutes of unapproved content. In November, IFC theaters did a special showing of “The House that Jack Built” that labeled the viewing as R but showed the NR version. The Motion Picture Association of America did not approve of IFC theaters showing the movie, so they made the director’s cut be released June 19 in the United States. 

Yet in Europe the not rated film is out for viewing and, with a few manipulations to my IP address, I had the chance to view the director’s cut. For me, it was not that gory and was nothing you wouldn’t see in a regular slasher film. There were probably two parts that would make one queasy, but it was not as everyone hyped up it up to be; walking out of the theater seems a bit excessive.  

Overall the movie was not bad. It had a complete, interesting plot, ended well and was produced beautifully. Just because it’s a horror movie doesn’t mean that it’s going to have static characters with a stupid plot line and unnecessary violence. It obviously wasn’t the film of the year, but I’m not mad I watched it; I wanted to see what everyone was talking about and how gross people were saying the movie was. 

The film is a play on Dante Alighieri’s “Inferno” in which Jack, played by Matt Dillion, is narrating the film with the character Virgil about 5 “incidents” or murders he committed as he is going through the levels of hell. Jack is a failed architect with obsessive-compulsive disorder who views his murder as art. He’s troubled with finding the right materials to build his house and can literally not help himself from killing people. 

The movie was unsettling and disturbing. It’s the concept as a whole that made it so harrowing; his murders were pieces of art and there was no “protagonist” like a detective trying to stop him. The most scarring parts were his human taxidermy and hunting kids. The scene of the kids was not just a little part that was inferred by the viewer but one of the longer, more gruesome murder scenes.  

What was distressing to me was the immorality of the film and character of killing innocent women and children with no boundaries. The misogynistic messages passed were so blatant and obvious that it was really upsetting someone had to write and come up with it. 

But besides feeling true horror of a few murder scenes, the movie was not bad. Although a very unpopular opinion, the story was interesting and different because there was only a protagonist/antagonist, depending on how you view Jack, that no one tried to stop, and it had a touch of dark humor. The movie was comical through its naivety of characters and the irony of Jack having a cleaning compulsion.  

This movie is hard to watch, and Lars von Trier is not for everyone, even those who have seen his films. But he’s different and truly doesn’t care what he puts out there, which is pretty admirable given a time when people are easily offended. The consistent characteristics of gore and mental illness in his movies make them so entertaining and deviate from the norm.