NIGHTSTREAM FILM FESTIVAL 2020 REVIEW! With a title as innocuous as Anything For Jackson, you might not think that this is one of the more disturbing horror films of the year. It almost sounds like the title to a Lifetime movie or an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel. I assure you, though, that is absolutely not the case for this Satanic spectacle.
Audrey (Shelia McCarthy) and Henry Walsh (Julian Richings) are a wealthy couple in their sixties. Henry is an OBGYN, and Audrey stays at their spectacular multi-story home. The two seem like the most homogeneous upper-middle-class people on Earth, but there’s something more to them than meets the eye. At the beginning of Anything For Jackson, Audrey and Henry drag a kicking and screaming pregnant woman to their upstairs bedroom/nursery. There is a little blonde boy playing in the room as well. It turns out that the blonde boy is the ghost of the titular Jackson, their grandson. The reason that the woman, Michelle Becker (Konstantina Mantelos), has been kidnapped is that the couple hopes Michelle can be the host for the reverse exorcism they will perform to bring Jackson back to life.
“…the couple hopes Michelle can be the host for the reverse exorcism they will perform to bring Jackson back to life.”
“What the f***?” you may be thinking, which you’re well within your rights to do. Yes, we are dealing with elderly congenial Satanists here, somewhat akin to the neighbors in Rosemary’s Baby. We see them go to a meeting of the Satanic church, which is held in the back room of a local library and attracts the likes of literal basement-dwellers such as Ian (Josh Cruddas). The couple originally asked Ian to get the book, which contains the spell to bring Jackson back, but he couldn’t find it.
Henry spent their life savings on this ancient book from a man in Jerusalem. So, after Michelle has been kidnapped, Henry and Audrey try to perform the ceremony to bring Jackson back. Michelle was the only person who could see Jackson before, but after the ceremony, Audrey sees him for a moment, cementing her belief that he is coming back to them. What the couple doesn’t know is that the ceremony didn’t just bring back Jackson but a slew of other not-so-cute ghosts.
"…might make you want to leave a light on when you go to sleep..."
