‘Jack and Jill 3’ VOD Review
Stars: Lee Hancock, Alesia Lifantii, Chrissie Wunna, Alina Desmond, Hemma Gulhane, Emily Webber, Stephen Stallone Thomas, Julia Quayle, Nico Bourgeais, Melly Myers, Samuel Mattioli, Yvonne Curwen | Written by Harry Boxley | Directed by Louisa Warren
How did this one pass me by? Apparently made in 2023, which was the same year as Jack and Jill: The Hills of Hell was released, Jack and Jill 3 is set 10 years after the last vicious killings on the hill, with the fairytale killers long thought dead. Speaking of killings, this third entry in the series opens with a montage of kills from the two previous entries in the series, just to remind folks of how vicious our titular killers can be and what we can expect from Jack and Jill 3 – though we have to get through a weird teacher/student lesbian tryst first!
Yes, I did say that…
It’s a bizarre way to start a film off, a teacher and her former student meeting on the hills and talking about the serial-killing duo, then getting drunk and getting it on… Oh, and did I mention they get interrupted mid-coitus by Jack and Jill? With British scream queen Chrissie Wunna getting beheaded in grisly fashion!
Jack and Jill 3 then gets into the story proper with the cast and crew of a live-streaming internet gameshow head to the hills to uncover the secrets of the legend, but, just like our two “friends” in the film’s opening, it seems Jack and Jill are back and ready to slaughter once again.
Thankfully, unlike the first sequel, which was essentially a redux of The Legend of Jack and Jill, in much the same way Evil Dead 2 was a redux of The Evil Dead, this third entry actually tells a new tale – one that feels almost meta in the way the cast of characters talk about Jack and Jill and the events of the previous films. The other big change this time round is the lack of involvement of either of Scott Jeffrey/Scott Chambers companies, Proportion Productions and Jagged Edge Productions. Instead, the reigns have been handed over to that other prolific low-budget British genre studio, Champdog Films, and their head honcho and director of this film, Louisa Warren.
What does that mean for this three-quel? Well, first off, I can imagine the budget was even more shoestring than the previous two films! But that doesn’t mean we’re in for a bad time – after all, this time round the script comes from Harry Boxley, who’s penned most of the fairytale horrors that have gone viral in the past year: Mouse of Horrors, Piglet, Popeye’s Revenge, Mouseboat Massacre, etc. Though how you feel about those films will probably determine your opinion of this one!
What we do get with Jack and Jill 3 is an actual exploration of the myth of the two characters – digging into their motivations, the reason for the massacre of anyone who comes to “their” hill, and even their mother’s involvement in the “birth” of the killer duo. It’s an exploration of the age-old question of nature versus nurture. Were Jack and Jill born evil and had the instinct to kill from birth? Or did their mother’s abandonment of them and their father’s brutal upbringing create the monstrous duo? It harkens back to the original film, which added themes of grief and loss to the story – it is these kinds of themes that add depth to the story, preventing them from turning out as merely yet another slasher film, like the second Jack and Jill film.
It does start to feel that there’s something lacking in Jack and Jill 3 however… Mainly Jack and Jill, who don’t appear outside of the prologue or flashbacks until halfway through the film! It’s a small niggle, but one that’s brilliantly offset by the sheer insanity of what follows when the pair do start killing. For whilst the kills may be low-budget, there’s more of a viscousness and intensity to them this time round, with some great foley work to make up for the lack of budget!
If I had any complaints, it was that there’s a plot thread I would have liked to have seen developed more – the fact that one of the gameshow contestants, Ruth, had a son who turned out to be a serial killer. It’s an intriguing aspect to the character that I thought could’ve been made more of, but instead it’s merely used as a bizarrely flirty conversation piece between Ruth and goth Pamela, whose dream is to shag a serial killer… but then admits the mother of one would do! It’s a complete waste of an opportunity to tie Ruth to Jack and Jill, build the mythos, if you will. She could’ve been a relation as she looks remarkably similar to Jack and Jill’s mother from the first film!
Nevertheless, wasted opportunity aside, Jack and Jill 3 is – despite the lower budget and new production team – undoubtedly an improvement over its predecessor.
*** 3/5
Jack and Jill 3 is available to stream on Tubi and rent/buy on Amazon Prime now.
