Film Reviews by PB

I rented this film because it had Tom Waits, Bill Murray et al acting, and it was horror.

Waits’ role in the film was as an observer of the townsfolk from his home in the woods and from his perspective they all seemed a bit stupid.

The Earth had been moved from it’s axis and for some reason it had caused the dead to rise from their graves. Zombies began their usual stuff and Policeman Murray etc. tried to stave off the tide of the dead. As a Waits song this may have been quite good, but as a film it appeared to me to be lacking in substance.

It may have been about how mankind seems to be drifting towards extinction and there is a nudge toward Romero’s Zombie shopping mall but overall the film lacks conviction and the ‘irony’ just make it seem to drag.

For those who get bored by the glut of formula flicks this film is a rare treat. From the title which could be taken from the nursery rhyme to the references to Virgil it's loaded with symbolism from the start to the finish. A poem for the unfortunate Jack, I found this film hugely entertaining but don’t want to spoil it for those who are thinking of giving it a try except to say that like the nursery rhyme, the film builds on the story line by line and divides it up into ‘events’ which ratchet up Jack’s deeds into sections of what we come to realize is symbolic of a deeper and deeper initiation into his own psychopathy.