Not quite sure about that title–Jack in the Box: Awakening. What, exactly, is awakening in this film? Not the Jack in the Box, not the characters, so to whom does it refer? This situation might be a metaphor for this film–everything seems good until you actually start thinking about it, then it doesn’t quite make sense or work very well at all.

Olga Marsdale (Nicola Wright), wealthy matriarch dying from cancer, procures a vintage Jack-in-the-Box that actually contains a wish-granting demon. If she gives the demon six people to kill, it will grant her wish–that her cancer be cured and she lives on. Horrified, yet strangely captivated, Olga’s son Edgar (Matt McClure)–whose middle name may as well be “Oedipus”–becomes the one to procure victims for mommy’s new toy.

All of that is just the precredit sequence.

We then meet Amy (Mollie Hindle), hired to be the new domestic servant at the Marsdale mansion. We see her a few times with a spray bottle and a cloth, otherwise her work as a maid seems rather nonexistent. She spends time socializing with the other employees and the viewer immediately counts the cast and realizes they’re all going to die, the only question now is the order. Perhaps that is my issue with the film – it cannot decide if Amy or Edgar is its protagonist. Are we meant to hope she lives or are we meant to enjoy his machinations as one after another Marsdale family associates are fed to the box’s inhabitant?

Jack in the Box: Awakening is a thematic sequel to writer/director Lawrence Fowler’s 2019 film Jack in the Box. Neither the plot/story nor the characters of that film play any role in this “sequel” – consider it more like a series in which the central character is the demon in the Jack in the Box. The actual Jack is kinda creepy, kinda doofy, but transforms into a three-clawed demonic clown that mauls its victims before pulling their remains into the box, which then slams shut and the dial spins to indicate which number victim this is like some sort of “My First Lament Configuration by Kenner.”

The demon is creepy, but as we seem him in full light almost immediately, there is no mystery to it – big, scary clown monster claws, maims, kills, repeat. Next. Along those lines and given the conceit and how well it works for low budget filmmaking, I suspect this is not the last Jack in the Box movie from Fowler.

The actors handle the material well, with kudos given to McClure for making Edgar a more full character than the stereotype he could be. Showing the film often from his perspective offers a different understanding of the story, and when it works, it works well. Given the direct exposition of the history of the box, the film could have focused much more on the mother and son, and I, for one, would have loved to learn much more about Olga, how she knows about the box, why she is willing to kill people she knows, and see (rather than be told) about the dynamic between her and Edgar.

The few moments Wright is onscreen seem like a missed opportunity to develop her and her relationship with her son far more, and that story is far more interesting than Amy’s. The script does not really give Hindle or other supporting actors enough to do, but Michaela Longden breathes life into her portrayal of Janet. She’s slightly more complete and complex than the other domestic characters.

Props must also be given to cinematographer Cameron Bryson–even when Jack in the Box: Awakening seems rote, it is well filmed and visually interesting. I only wish the film had made more use of the darkness of the manor to make the monster less visible. The best and most unnerving moments are when the monster is in darkness, but we know it is coming.

6 out of 10