Jack Be Nimble

The gothic horror film Jack Be Nimble has a hallucinatory power and psychological refinement that you won't find in any number of movie adaptations of Stephen King novels, including Carrie . . . What makes Jack Be Nimble a superior genre film is that it never loses its focus on childhood trauma and obsession and their tragic repercussions.

– Reviewer Stephen Holden in The New York Times, 10 June 1994

Growing up apart, the siblings cling to their childhood memories of one another, each longing for a time when they will be reunited. As the film cuts back and forth between scenes of their childhood and adolescence, it evokes their misery and isolation with a feverish intensity that recalls scenes from Hitchcock and De Palma.

– Reviewer Stephen Holden in The New York Times, 10 June 1994

Through the lens of a bleak fable, Garth Maxwell delivers a fantastical allegory about battling formative traumas. He puts his characters’ rawest emotions on full display, and he embellishes their journey with exciting direction and striking imagery.

– American reviewer Paul Lê, Bloody Disgusting website, 5August 2022

There's a lot of weird, nasty stuff going on in Jack Be Nimble, and I was entranced by all of it. The boldness of the vision is undeniable. Like Vincent Ward's The Navigator, it beautifully combines a resolutely personal vision with bold genre elements. The result is a film as immediately captivating as it is resonant. It's one of the strangest New Zealand films ever made, and dark in a way few get to be. It deserves way more of a cult reputation than it currently enjoys, and feels ripe for rediscovery.

– Dominic Corry, 'Kiwi cinema at its twisted best', The NZ Herald, 22 May 2014

Bruno understood just how to use his eyes and his voice, his presence, to spook the viewer, while adding a combination of eroticism and implied threat. He was amazing.

– Writer/director Garth Maxwell on working with Bruno Lawrence in one of his final roles, The NZ Herald, 22 May 2014

I wanted the film to be like an opiated dream, off the rails, lush and terrifying. But funny too!

– Writer/director Garth Maxwell in The NZ Herald, 22 May 2014

We wanted it to feel elemental, blood, water, wire, twisted macrocarpas, the sun seen flickering through poplar trees as you drive, but we wanted the film to feel like it wasn't set quite in the present — sometime between the Victorian era, and say the fifties. Wardrobe choices went that way as did choices of cars and props. Keeping the dowdy fairytale aspect tangible.

– Writer/director Garth Maxwell in The NZ Herald, 22 May 2014

If John Irving and Stephen King had collaborated to give us Garp and Carrie as twins separated at birth, they might well have come up with this strange New Zealand offering . . . it certainly has a nightmarish, disjointed feel, but writer-director Maxwell, aided by excellent lead performances, also manages to make this at once affecting, funny and horrifying.

– British horror expert Kim Newman mistakes the main characters as twins, in a four star review in Empire

No, no-one in my family was psychic or acted like any of these terrible people! But, being a gay kid growing up in suburbia, I had my own strange take on what and where I was, and all that neurosis and anguish bled into what this film became. I also read about a Taranaki farmer who tied his children upside down from the back of the kitchen door and beat the kids' feet with rods. And a gay guy I knew told me he had been whipped with barbed wire. So, it all went into the mix.

– Writer/director Garth Maxwell on whether the film is autobiographical, The NZ Herald, 22 May 2014

The film is in synch with people seeking self-fulfilment outside of constricted official options. Jack allows for mutability, self-determination, and bizarre pagan transformations. The plot hinges on female characters wrestling fiercely for power — they are the spine of the plot, the good and the bad.

– Writer/director Garth Maxwell describes the film, The NZ Herald (Canvas section), 9 July 2022

Sarah was 25 when we made the movie. I credit her with providing the emotional depth, sincerity, ballast, and beauty to power the film, to match Alexis, and to embody the craziness of the material with dignity. Without her, and her mane of wild black hair — as I said, it is a movie about hair, and I wasn't joking — the film would have been a disaster. In every scene she's in, and she's in most, you can't take your eyes off her.

– Writer/director Garth Maxwell on the work of actor Sarah Smuts-Kennedy, The NZ Herald (Canvas section), 9 July 2022

What continues to make it so relevant is its focus on gender roles in the context of the family. The film satirises and rejects traditional, socially sanctioned notions of the family, and suggests there are other models for what family could be. What makes it work as horror is the way it exaggerates the family theme in gothic ways that are frighteningly close to reality. Toxic masculinity and toxic femininity and the extreme behaviour that results from them — emotional and physical violence, self-harm, bullying, sexism, child abuse, and so on — are themes that fuel and recur in the horror film today.

– Museum of Modern Art curator Ron Magliozzi, who chose Jack Be Nimble for a season of horror films at MOMA, in Art News New Zealand, Summer 2022

...my experience of doing a palatable piece of romance [with Beyond Gravity] was bruising. So my response was 'F###you, I'm going the other way, I'm going dark and hard. And yes, it'll be artful and lush, but I'm not going to muck around.'

– Writer/director Garth Maxwell, in an interview with Art News New Zealand, Summer 2022

...the film manages to sustain a pungent gothic atmosphere. The collection of images becomes hypnotic — spellbinding the viewer, just as Jack's strange light machine mesmerises his abusive foster family. The lead performances are top drawer, and the enduring affection between the siblings believable and affecting . . . Sarah Smuts-Kennedy fittingly balances melodrama and emotional complexity.

– Hamish McDouall praises Jack Be Nimble as "the pinnacle" of Kiwi horror films, in his 2009 book 100 Essential New Zealand Films, page 88