THE JACK IN THE BOX

BOIIIIING!!! CONTAINS MINOR SPOILERS

A very, very minor horror using a set of very familiar tropes: someone finds an object which turns out to be cursed and starts killing people off; no-one believes them and they then have to run around trying to prove their innocence and defeat the curse, by tracking down the object's previous owner and/or a demonology expert. They then have to race against time to confront the evil and destroy it before it kills a loved one but something goes wrong and it's not really defeated because, hey, franchise potential.

The Jack In The Box is pretty much straight down this line and offers very few surprises, the main one being that the lead character is male when more often than not it's the girl. The other is that it's all shot in Northamptonshire (though the hero is American). Most of it takes place in the underattended museum where the box, which looks not unlike a large Lament Configuration, has suddenly turned up after a house clearance (a minor plot point that actually doesn't make any sense). Our hero, who has a guilty backstory that's giving him insomnia and therefore might be messing with his sense of reality, merrily opens it and releases the evil entity trapped within, a grotesque clown figure seeking to kill six people....

It's spectacularly ordinary: it's not the absolute worst but it's not any good at all, it's just about borderline okay at very, very best. There's a bit of blood and gore here and there, but nothing to trouble the 15 certificate; there are a couple of effective jump scares, and the monster makeup is nicely realised, but it all feels flat and half-hearted and you're left wondering what the point of all that was. There's supposedly a sequel on the way.

**