A bereaved Satanist couple kidnaps a pregnant woman so they can use an ancient spellbook to put their dead grandson’s spirit into her unborn child but end up summoning more than they bargained for.
I have reviewed a lot of movies recently for the horror streaming service Shudder but I have to say, I’ve been very disappointed with every title so far: “Spare Parts,” “Son,” “The Reckoning,” and “Violence” are some of their latest offerings and I have to say, I was not impressed with any of them. Their latest contribution, “Anything for Jackson,” is no different from the aforementioned movies, and it underwhelms in every conceivable aspect.
It tells the story of an elderly Satanist couple, Henry (Julian Richings), and his wife Audrey (Sheila McCarthy), who kidnap a young pregnant woman with the intent of inserting their dead grandson’s spirit into her unborn baby but things don’t go according to plan. After searching a long time for an ancient spellbook, Henry, a doctor at a local clinic, flies to the Middle East where he spends all of his retirement funds on buying the book from a black market dealer. When he returns, he gives the book to Audrey who immediately begins reading it, and sometime later, she casts a spell on a dead bird and brings it back to life.
Henry abducts a young pregnant woman, Becker (Konstantina Mantelos), a new patient at his clinic and he and Audrey tie her to a bed in their attic, which they have soundproofed so her screams won’t be heard by neighbors. Confident they now have a grasp on the book and how to utilize its pages, Audrey casts a spell on Becker’s unborn child but shortly thereafter, they both begin to experience strange goings-on in their house: apparitions, deceased spirits returning from the dead, and when a Satanist friend of theirs informs them that the spell they cast was not performed properly and that they have actually summoned one of hell’s most vile demons, they try to reverse the original spell but only make matters worse.
There is absolutely nothing scary about “Anything for Jackson,” the monsters and demons that make an appearance look like they were manufactured in the producers’ basement, utilizing paper mesh and casting latex. Some specters are even reduced to wearing white bedsheets because the production obviously ran out of funds. However you look at it, “Anything for Jackson” might have had an interesting premise lurking around somewhere but it gets lost in the film’s desire to be overly ambitious and pretentious, reducing it instead to nothing more but a series of disjointed scenes, complete with unscary and unintentionally funny supernatural entities.
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