The Jester (2023)
Rating: **
Starring: Michael Sheffield, Lelia Symington, Delaney White
Based on a series of Youtube short films from 2016 to 2019,
The Jester (2023) should have been about the exploits of a mysterious masked jester as he terrorizes a small town celebrating Halloween with twistedly deadly magic tricks, but it instead focuses mostly on soapy drama between two estranged half-sisters who are meeting for the first time after their father seemingly committed suicide. (Read. Seemingly) This draggy attempt of a plot spends its run rubbing in the fact that it have some form of depth going here, with the women discussing their issues of having a father who abandoned a family to move on to another; one of them is rightfully pissed at him for leaving her and her mum, while the other just wants to patch things up and, hopefully, help her sister move on from the pain.
This is all easier said than done when, somehow, a supernatural masked magician gets connected to all of this. And I don't mean this in a way that the girls had a chance encounter-gone-hellishly wrong with the Jester while out for coffee and swapping around childhood stories, no. That would have been preferrable. Rather, the maniac magician just happens the one who killed their father after the guy failed to gain the forgiveness for ditching a family, which implies that the Jester has some bit of history with the guy, even more so when the ghoul starts berating one of the sisters with frightening visions of their undead pa scolding them for being unforgiving and cold. The story never bothered to explain, though, why the masked creep is this invested with the family, opting to hide this fact behind more conflicted melodrama and strived emotional horror of the B-grade kind, which makes the whole gag of the movie having some semblance of layers feel boringly cliched, flimsy and borderline pretentious.
You can clearly tell
The Jester (2023) wanted to make something out of its titular villain, perhaps a representation of grief or trauma given the ending narrative. A novel goal, sure, but greatly lacking in execution. If anything, the whole movie is unnecessarily dramatic and could have benefitted more as a straightforward supernatural slasher seeing that the best moments here are The Jester doing his killer tricks. From an elevated strangling and death by tied shoelaces, to an entire head disappearing via magic hat and body parts removed ala cup tricks, our ghastly grinning ghoul does all of this magical terror through enigmatic yet playful pantomime body language, with special effects that are delightfully practical. The whole concept of a mute killer magician murdering their victims via paranormally empowered parlor tricks should have opened an opportunity to be wild and imaginative with the story, but, once more, the movie shackled itself as overly serious psychological horror, thus reducing the villain's role to almost just a lingering presence, his whimsically twisted kills an afterthought
The Jester (2023), by the end of it, is plainly underwhelming. Clumsily mixing psychodrama with slasher tropes that barely benefits one another, the movie is a misfire of missed opportunities. Its story would have worked better with a different, less flashy villain. Its villain would have worked better with a cheesier, more popcorn-friendly story. All in all, a hardly passable affair.
Bodycount:
1 male strangled by an elevated noose
1 male trips on a tied shoelace, hits his head on a tombstone
1 male gets an entire apple rupture out from his throat and mouth
1 male had his head removed via hat trick, shot
1 male killed offscreen
1 male had his eyes and teeth removed via a cup trick
Total: 6
