Jack in the Box Rises‘s story continues the one that The Jack in the Box and Awakening have introduced, the story of the cursed child’s toy. This time around, Jack is hanging out in a girl’s boarding school and is back once again.
Let’s begin our move by talking about our 3 protagonists who are looking for this guy named Harvey`s heart. Harvey is played by Derek Nelson, who also appeared in The Manson Family Massacre and Gods of the Deep. Instead, they meet The Dollmaker, played by James Reynard who kills two of them. With some elements like desk lamp edges, Raven (Isabella Colby Browne) manages to survive and flee to safety entirely missing her objectives.
That’s a problem because in order to use speed tools, Harvey is holding Raven’s father captive in order to convince her to retrieve these supernatural artifacts. This time however he decides to go all in and send her on a hunt to find why that particular dollor is held in a box in a mansion turned into a school. A school which apparently Harvey is planning to push for her to get accepted to.
Lawrence Fowler, who has directed the last two films and joined Lawrence in writing The Ghost Within, strategic approach was to dive straight to the clichés, don’t they? Raven is seen holding her mobile phone throughout and even when the speaker, headmistress Hinch (Lisa Antrobus), orders her to refrain from utilizing her mobile phone she goes on to reassure Raven that the school should not be seen in such a context because, In prison, you’re allowed visitors, even though the gates are locked.
Although I liked the first two films in the series, I can’t say the same about The Jack in the Box Rises which takes off with quite a dismal opening, a few not so spectacular murders, followed by some funny scenes of Raven the delinquent, as she tries to invade the territory of the primary girl bully in the school, Olivia (Leona Clarke, Summoning Bloody Mary 2, The Deadly Swarm), rather than seeking Jack who is hiding within the building in darkness.
Things start to gain momentum once it’s found, and when it’s finally released, The Jack in the Box Rises tears its title. Jack (Nicholas Anscombe, Crocodile Swarm, Edge of Extinction) begins stalking the school hallways. But it’s not only the atmosphere that has been remade from the previous sequel.
Harvey doesn’t explain more about the Jack in the Box to Raven leaving those who haven’t watched the other films not lost and confused. They too are the ones who will benefit from this film most of all for it will be new to them. And that is the problem I had with it, it’s not a bad movie it is just very familiar. Perhaps if the Fowlers had given some depth to the boring school concept in The Jack in the Box Rises, it would have scored more. However, they don’t do much other than mix in a few reform school clichés to create some sort of tension among the one dimensional figures that pass as characters.
I do not anticipate much in terms of character development as these are not Shakespeare series. But the most you know about any of Raven’s classmates is one saying ”After my mother died, my stepfather was quite clear about me not being welcome in his house.” Others are worse they exist simply to be killed and the scriptwriters did not care about any of them.
However, we do get a couple of interesting effects: such as chopped off fingers, a claw impaling a body, and some blood splatter over corpses. It’s nothing great but better than nothing, and it’s practical as well unlike those effects showing how the demon looks when caught under a blood moon.
So all things considered, The Jack in the Box Rises is a successor that suffers from being a rather thoughtless sequel, one that many of the franchise’s fans will find disappointing. Those who never met Jack before will probably be mildly amused at the least. But it’s high time to put Jack back in the box if they can’t come up with something new for the fourth film.
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