I’m not entirely sure what my motivation was in choosing this one. There’s a part of me that thinks the notion was that while I was already feeling like I got kicked in the balls from such a horrible movie as yesterday’s that another kick couldn’t hurt. But another part of me wonders if I thought that this film would certainly have to be better than yesterday’s because of my own bastardized Occam’s Razor when it comes to these movies. Right now my goal is to have you immediately confused as to whether or not this movie was better or worse than yesterdays and how I felt about it. If that’s where you’re at, then I’ve done my job. If you’re not there then who am I even writing these to anyways. That was a joke. I kind of planned that way. What’s funny is that in the joke, I’m now explaining the joke to someone who admittedly isn’t there. Which wouldn’t be funny. But if you are there then the joke doesn’t work and this exposition is entirely unnecessary and meaningless. But here we are. Or aren’t. Anyways, this movie was better. So that should answer most of the questions you have now except the existential ones. I don’t think I can help with those. We’re in a Schrödinger territory now, aren’t we. Let’s get into it.
I do think that the cover art for this flick is what pulled me in both when I saw it initially making my list and again today while watching it. The thumbnail for it is similar to yesterday’s film and I think I had higher hopes for this one. Not that I knew anything more about it. I think I just felt like I had to go up from here. What I will notate I find ironic, Bedeviled currently sits at a 4.2 on IMDb and The Jester is at a 4. Mathematically that would suggest this movie is inferior. Having watched both of them, I do not think this is accurate in the least. Before I go out on too much of limb for this movie, it’s not a great movie. But certainly by comparison, The Jester stands far and away from the predecessor on this list. The caliber of actors is not dramatically better but still somewhat more capable. We’re still dealing with people who should be in a 4 scale movie on IMDb. But I’d probably put this one at more of a 4.5 or 4.6 instead of a flat 4.
What I liked about this movie would have to first be the production value. I’m going to do a lot of things comparatively to Bedeviled when it comes to the legitimacy of The Jester. I do want you to bear in mind that as a film all on it’s own, it still wasn’t all that bad but it wasn’t all that great either. It was just a step up from where I had been. I didn’t stop to look but if I had to guess, I’d say the two films had similar budgets. And while Bedeviled did have better production value than most shitty horror movies, it was far from studio quality. Again, The Jester isn’t a WB blockbuster production but when I look at the two of them side by side, The Jester has a look that FEELS like it’s a bigger movie. The camera work seems better. It just has an overall feel like you’re watching a real movie. The practical effects are pretty reasonable too. By having the main antagonist front and center throughout the whole movie, it made far more sense than the application villain from the other movie. There was a more plausible but still mysterious nature to the chaos this Jester was up to overall.
Then there is the character of the Jester himself. I did like him as a villain in this story. He bridged the gap between reality and magic well. There’s a very tangible nature to him as he’ interacts directly with several people in the movie. There are times when you’ll get an antagonist whose purpose is directed at toying with someone, much like a Freddy Krueger. He plays with his victims and drives them crazy both in the dream world and in the real world. He has dominion over their dreams so he can inflict pain or just mess with them. When those same pour souls discover his power is bound to sleep, they often attempt to simply stay awake which only exacerbates the problem. Thus his impact is two fold. In this film there is a similar duality to how the Jester behaves. He is a very tangible character that people can see and interact with. Namely the scene in the convenience store when one of the principal cast is attempting to report a crime perpetrated by the Jester to a couple police officers as well as the clerk in the store. This would often be a case where the young lady reporting the crime would be looked at as crazy, which happens for a moment, until the Jester shows up and begins to inflict his horror on the others. What I liked about this is that it felt like it kind of threw out the rules. That’s what tends to get a lot of horror characters in trouble as it stands. They establish rules for how they got to be who they are and why they have the abilities that they do but then eventually those “rules” get challenged either by the longevity of the series, ie too many sequels, or just the necessity of a plot. Eventually you run out of ways to resurrect a bad guy and you just make something up. Many times once you break your own rules, you lose your credibility. And we should be clear here, The Jester has very little credibility. But through the lens of this being a not great movie, I felt like the fact that the Jester really could just assault anyone and not specifically the victims intended in the plot, it did make him a bit more sinister.
I don’t really have a laundry list of complaints about the film. It’s not a great film. Again, comparatively, it’s far more impressive than Bedeviled. But I have a hard time creating a standard by which Bedeviled is any kind of margin. So The Jester really only works well in the light of this comparative value. The story of The Jester has plenty of holes and doesn’t make a lot of sense when you start drilling down. Even if you let a lot of things go it’s just not put together very cohesively. The actors are not much better in this film. There’s a few performances that are ok and even the bad ones were still much better than the miserable teenagers from yesterday. This is probably the biggest complaint. The guy who wrote this film plays dual roles in it and his speaking role should have gone to someone else. Ultimately it’s a relatively boring movie with a few good scares. Had I not watched it directly after the dumpster fire from yesterday, I’d probably be writing about how this movie is just not good. I think that’s really what it boils down to. It doesn’t feel like it’s a bad movie but it never makes a case that it’s a good movie either. It just kind of exists. The other movie I watched was bad. It was outright bad. There were several things wrong with it and it’s obviously still annoying well after I watched it. This movie has some enjoyable moments. The Jester sort of bridges that gap between the creepy mask of “The Black Phone” with a much lesser pantomime malevolence of an Art the Clown from “Terrifier”. I think that’s what really does this movie in is that it’s not a bad idea, it just never finds it’s own footing to be good on and is only definable by collecting the comparable movies that it borrows from ultimately. So it’s just kind of it’s own white noise in the end.
I think I should probably give this movie a C-. Had I watched it on another day, I feel like it could have gotten a D pretty easily but it was such a step up from Bedeviled that I think I’m feeling generous. I don’t regret watching it in the end. It served it’s purpose and there were really a handful of moments that I quite enjoyed what they put together in this film. It’s too bad it didn’t get a bigger and better treatment because I kind of feel like there could have been a much better story that was told more wholly if it had a little more financial backing and maybe a few more rewrites on the story. This is one of those candidates for a remake from somebody in a James Wan kind of capacity that could take this and turn the creep factor way up and tell a more convincing story. If you’re in the mood for a low budget scare or maybe just want a horror movie on that you don’t have to pay too close attention to, this is it. You can get by pretty easily with this one and be ok I’d say. And on that note, I think that’s about all we have to say on The Jester. So until next time, I’ll catch you on the flip side.
