Anything for Jackson: Horror, Grief, Love
Is two pools of blood running together the most romantic thing I've ever seen?
Let’s just call this Shudder month, shall we? I watched ten movies last month and six of them were streamed on Shudder.
(here’s a screenshot from my Letterboxd, if you’re interested. Hearts all around! Also, let's be friends on Letterboxd!)
Anyways, today I’m going to continue my foray into niche indie movies with 2020s Anything for Jackson.
Just like last week’s examination of 825 Forest Road, I’m going to start with a spoiler-free section and then follow with spoilers. That layout seemed to work well. Because, hey, I want those who haven’t seen it to be able to read this, and also I have THOUGHTS.
Spoiler-free review of Anything for Jackson
This section is spoiler free!
2020’s Anything for Jackson follows an elderly couple whose young grandson recently died in a car accident. Oh, yeah–they’re Satanists, and not in the fun really-we’re-just-atheists-making-a-point kind of way. They’ve kidnapped a pregnant woman so they can perform a “reverse exorcism” and implant Jackson’s soul in her unborn fetus.
This came out five years ago, but I only started hearing about it in the last couple of years. During my pregnancy and after the birth of my daughter, I was semi-subconsciously avoiding movies having to do with childbirth and young children, though not really, because that’s like, 90% of the type of horror movie I like. In fact, the first movie I watched after giving birth was Skinamarink, a movie having heavily to do with kids (and probably the worst candidate to watch in the bright light of day while holding a fussing newborn), and the first movie I wrote about on this Substack was The First Omen, which had not one, not two, but THREE of the gnarliest pregnancy-related sequences I’ve ever seen.
So I’ve watched plenty of preggo/kid-centric horror. Heck, I’ve even seen Birth/Rebirth. But for some reason the description of Anything for Jackson made me think it was going to be extra uncomfortable. And maybe it would have been early on when I was still a quivering ball of postpartum nerves, but my daughter is 2.5 years old this month and maybe I’m past all that, because it really wasn’t bad at all. There’s no harm to children shown, and besides the overarching situation of being kidnapped-while-pregnant, nothing explicit in that realm, either.
Which makes me regret not watching this sooner, because, ya’ll. This movie is really good. Like, possibly one of the best horror movies to come out in 2020.
First of all, the horror is on point. There are several great jump scares. There’s one ghost-entity created with what I’m assuming is a combination of the actor’s physiology and completely practical effects that’s particularly creepy–and the film-makers know it, because they use it several times. Heck, they even manage to make a sheet-ghost kinda scary, which earns them brownie points from me because I love sheet ghosts, and they are hard to pull off in a truly horrific way.
It’s also funny in places, and the jump scares are used in tandem with the humor. If you haven’t seen it yet, “She’s been doing that all day” doesn’t mean anything to you now, but you’ll get it later.
I was surprised to find out that the husband-wife team that directed this had only done Hallmark movies in the past, but I shouldn’t have been. This is, among other things, a love story, in the same vein as The Haunting of Bly Manor: tinged with darkness.
The movie is titled Anything for Jackson, but it could just have easily been titled Anything for Audrey. We barely see the titular Jackson, and the film makes no moves to personally endear him to us. It doesn’t need to, as we all intrinsically relate to the grandparents’ devotion to him. He is the archetypical child: precious, beloved, a blank slate. But it’s also not about him. It’s about the pair of them and their grief, and the lengths they're willing to go to to get him back, and their loyalty to each other.
Especially Henry’s loyalty to Audrey. There’s one particularly motivating scene where he explains his motivations to Shannon, saying that his wife was unable to come out of the darkness after Jackson’s death, and so he joined her there, and everything he does he does for her. Anything for Audrey.
The movie opens and closes with Nat King Cole’s A Bicycle Built for Two playing in the background, and it’s an apt song choice. Where she goes, he goes.
The third main character, Shannon, doesn’t have as much to do because she’s literally strapped to a bed for 90% of the runtime, but she too is a fully fleshed character, and the actress playing her does as good a job as she can. The entire cast does, in fact.
So I think that’s it for the spoiler free section. It’s definitely worth a stream if you have Shudder, or a loan from your local library if not.
Spoilers Start Here - You've Been Warned!
Speaking of Audrey and Henry, it's clear from the very first scene that Audrey is the one running the show. She's planned everything, is probably the one who found the maguffin grimoire they used to summon all the spirits.
Henry's a doctor, but lacks the street smarts that Audrey has. All of the errors early on are his. He’s too clever for his own good when he tells his receptionist that he saw Shannon walking by his house that morning. If he'd just simply acted mildly concerned that she didn't show up to her appointment then no one would have suspected him of anything.
But then we wouldn't have the jump scare of the detective shooting herself in the head, or the subsequent running gag of her doing it on repeat. One of the most effective beats of the movie (and there are many effective beats), and the periodic gunshot adds a lot of tension in the last third of the film.
Speaking of people randomly offing themselves, Rory’s good-natured shouting “Jackson’s coming back to you. He's IN there,” before diving into the snowblower was so jarring, made all the better by his toothy any Joe good-guy grin.
It’s a great scare and really shows the stakes, but I wonder what influences Rory and the detective to kill themselves. It can’t be one of the spirits, because wouldn’t they want to stay in a body they just hijacked?
Besides the relationship between Audrey and Henry, and the buildup to the heartbreaking reveal that she was the one driving the car when Jackson was killed and her daughter was disabled, the ghosts are the most interesting part of this movie, and I find myself having questions about how they work:
In the world of this film, it seems that death changes a person, twists them into something sinister. We see five ghosts in this film: Jackson, Jackson's mom (who appears as a trick-or-treater in a sheet ghost costume), a woman who obsessively flosses her teeth until they fall out, a contorting man with a bag over his head, Rory the handyman, and the detective who shot herself while investigating Shannon’s disappearance.
All these manifestations, with the exception of Jackson, are pretty messed up. The level of messed-upness ranges from gruesomely annoying (the cop repeatedly shooting herself but otherwise not interacting), to frightening (flossing lady), to actively attacking (sheet ghost and bag head).
So there's one of three things going on here:
The ritual has done something to the spirits it attracts, warps them in some way to make them sinister.
Your form in death depends on how you died. (A la Beetlejuice)
Your form in death depends on who you were in life.
I actually think it's a combination of two and three. All the spirits we see (with the exception of Jackson's Mom, but we’ll get to her) appear as they did when they died. Even Jackson has an injury on the back of his head.
But what type of person they were before they died also matters, presumably. Flossing lady is dressed in a hospital gown, likely a psychiatric patient. And while she's very unnerving, she never really tries to hurt anyone. The only one who does is Bag Head, who was likely a shitty person IRL seeing as someone saw fit to suffocate him to death.
The detective, despite being disturbing, doesn't actually hurt anyone. Though perhaps one of the creepiest moments in the film is when you see her in the background like she's going to come in and shoot herself again but then just turns and shambles away.
But what about Sheet Ghost? Well, when Shannon asks why she hasn't brought her daughter back, Audrey explains that she can't. Part of her had already emotionally died, even though she survived the initial accident. Sheet Ghost is a now-twisted part of her daughter's psyche - the part that felt joy, like the joy of dressing up as her favorite thing for Halloween.
I wish this movie had delved deeper into the concept of identity. Sure, they can put Jackson's soul into the body of Shannon's unborn child, but will he still be Jackson? Being a toddler suddenly in the body of an infant must be a weird experience. Would he remember he was once Jackson? Either way wouldn't it change him immensely?
And what about Shannon's baby? Is there a soul already in there? If there isn't, is that not evidence that a baby's body can't house a soul at all, that it has to be developed through experience? And if there is a soul already, what happens to it? Is it ousted, or does it merge with Jackson? No one seems perturbed by this, not even Shannon.
I feel all this - an unborn baby with potentially two souls inside - would have made a good foil with Sheet Ghost, who is arguably only part of a soul.
As a mom, I'm of course concerned about the fate of poor Jackson. At the end we see him watching Shannon from the window, only to be picked up by unseen hands. The film leaves it ambiguous, but I choose to believe it was Audrey, Henry, or both picking him up, uniting with him in death.
Is this what a happy ending looks like? Everyone got what they wanted, after all. Shannon goes free, The Walsh’s get their grandson. Even the hellspawn gets to walk the earth unchecked.
H. H. Duke is a writer, author, and podcaster. Most importantly, she loves horror! Currently, she’s working on a book about a weird cave. OoooOOoo! For scary book recommendations, horror movie reviews, and other spooky things, subscribe to H. is for Horror now - If you dare!
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The Haunting of Bly Manor: Romance and Regret
What I’m Reading
The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
