Movie Review: Anything for Jackson (2020)

Directed by Justin G. Dyck, and going severely against type according to his IMDb page, Anything for Jackson is a 2020 horror film starring Sheila McCarthy (Umbrella Academy) and Julian Richings (so much stuff, including Orphan Black and Supernatural) as Audrey and Henry Walsh, respectively. When a grieving elderly couple kidnap a pregnant woman in the hopes of performing a reverse exorcism — putting the soul of their dead grandson back into the body of the unborn child — they accidentally open themselves up to more otherworldly visitors than they expected.

+ as a long time fan of horror movies, I found the plot to be quite unique. Off the top of my head I don’t know of any other reverse exorcisms in film, and this set up made for a lot of good horror tropes to be put back onto the protagonists (who for the records, are still undeniably the villains in this story). In terms of tone, this may sometimes see to toe the line between horror and black comedy, but it’s a horror movie. Don’t be tricked if you feel yourself subconsciously giggling
+ I’m a long time fan of Richings, and get a kick whenever he pops up in whatever I’m watching , and his work alongside McCarty was again something really unexpected and unique for a horror movie. It would have been easy to do this same sort of film with a group of squealing twenty-somethings, but making the protagonists older with an established life to set the story around was a great idea
+ believe it or not, the movie is genuinely scary with various ghosts (or are they) and apparitions (or are they) triggering something in me that not many other horror films do. There was also a couple of very unsettling (and perhaps unintentional, due to their subtlety) breaking of the fourth wall that made me quite uncomfortable
+ a small handful of side characters do appear, including the woman they kidnap, Shannon Becker (Konstantina Mantelos). All of these characters are important in their own way, and have their own effects on the story

Audrey and Henry Walsh (Shelia McCarty and Julian Richings), who are willing to do Anything for Jackson.

Boo! I told you this was a ghost story.

Should you see this film: Despite the good cast and the interesting premise, I wasn’t really expecting much from this – maybe just call me jaded. But as you’ll see from the lack of any negatives above, this was a fantastic horror movie and one of the best I’ve seen in a very long time.