Jackals
Directed by Kevin Greutert
When their oldest son is brainwashed by a disturbing cult obsessed with violence, a family enlists a cult deprogrammer to extract him. But as they work on reversing the damage to his mind, the family finds themselves under siege, trapped in a remote vacation home deep in the woods and surrounded by ruthless cultists determined to take back their missing member. A vicious battle unfolds, unleashing a bloodbath in which there will be few survivors.
Set in the 1980s, an estranged family hires a cult deprogrammer to take back their teenage son from a murderous cult, but find themselves under siege when the cultists surround their cabin, demanding the boy back.
Cast: Stephen Dorff, Deborah Kara Unger, Johnathon Schaech
Member Reviews
Good idea, scary
Awesome
Excellent sound track. Main complaint is i would've liked to have seen more of a character contrast of the son.
They could have done way better with this movie but for some reason i've still watched it probably once every year for the past 6 years. So I do like it.... This movie reminds me of a little mixture of the knock at the cabin, purge 1, and the strangers
It is a shame Jackals did not try to be more ambitious. The idea underpinning the narrative - a family attempts to 'deprogram' their son, the brainwashed member of a cult - was interesting and could have been developed a lot more. There was scope for an intriguing cat-and-mouse battle between the family and their ex-army deprogrammer, and the swivel eyed son; and the belief system of the cult could have been explored. Instead, the intervention aspect is really just a MacGuffin, used to set up the plot of the film, because it requires these people to be in an isolated area so they can be marauded by the cult, intent on getting their lost sheep back. So instead of a psychological battle of wits we get a standard siege movie, as if the writer had seen Assault on Precinct 13 and decided to remake it (bearing in mind Assault was already a remake of an old Howard Hawks Western.) Its also very short - and a chunk of that slender 83 minutes run time is taken up with a pointless opening sequence shot which is really there so the director can fantasies about being Orson Welles - though who can begrudge him that? All in all, Jackals is bad. It's actually pretty good at what it does. Just that what it does is something that has been done a lot. And Jackals doesn't do anything new with it those old ideas.