When Grief Turns To The Devil In Justin Dyck’s Anything For Jackson

If you’re like me, you’ve probably always wondered what would happen if the grandparents of a deceased toddler joined a cult and kidnapped a pregnant woman in an attempt to resurrect the child and live happily ever after. Well, you’re in luck — because that’s exactly what happens in Shudder’s new horror flick, Anything For Jackson, and the shenanigans that follow will not disappoint. The movie has been compared to the likes of Ari Aster because of its cult themes, so if you are a fan of the cult niche, you might enjoy this watch.

Anything For Jackson was released in December 2020 and was directed by the Christmas movie film director Justin Dyck. While Dyck has primarily produced Hallmark-style Christmas movies in the past, he seems to have dived right into the cult-themed horror niche with his scary movie debut. At this point, you might be scratching your head — why should you watch a horror movie directed by a Christmas movie director and expect to have a good experience?

Ultimately, Anything For Jackson was a horror movie I had to sit on for a few weeks. At first, the movie teetered on the line between comedy and horror in a somewhat distasteful way. The only redeeming quality for me was the movie’s finale. Still, after some stewing and consideration, I’ve recognized this movie as its own brand of dark horror-comedy — a brand that has not exploded in the horror genre but may very well soon. Beneath its horror-comedy surface, Anything For Jackson offers a unique storyline and a strangely haunting ending, which will terrify viewers and leave them wanting more of its niche-cult action.

Anything For Jackson’s Twisted Storyline

The movie’s plot boils down to this: two deranged and grieving grandparents turn to cult ceremonies in an attempt to resurrect their deceased grandson — a cult ceremony that includes kidnapping a pregnant woman and stealing her unborn child. As the movie progresses, it is also revealed that the grieving grandparents lost their daughter to suicide after she was disabled in a nearly fatal car accident that killed her infant son, Jackson. The cherry on top of this fairytale is that the daughter killed herself in the grandparents’ home, and she wasn’t discovered until much after the event.

Horror movies don’t often indulge in this type of grieving tragedy. Beneath its dark-comedy surface, this movie is rooted in pain. In an attempt to indulge in the lengths to which grieving can push a person, director Justin Dyck perfectly describes the kind of chaotic resolutions that come to those grieving the loss of loved ones — a kind of loss that can barely be understood by those who have not gone through it.

The juxtaposition of two seemingly sweet grandparents and some dark cult-behavior is comedic at first, but as you watch the movie, the delusions of these two grieving individuals become both apparent and demented. The horrors of this movie are not seated in the horrific scenes of a pregnant captive woman, demons appearing, or apparitions of women flossing so aggressively that their teeth fall out, but rather they are seated in the fear we all try to avert our eyes from the fear of losing a loved one.

Delusional solutions and hard-to-watch desperation for escaping grief are the twisted horrors of this movie. While the storyline itself is both unique and terrifying, recognizing the deeper meaning behind Anything For Jackson is what truly makes this movie twisted. Films like this leave people wondering what kind of lengths they would go to reclaim a lost love — and director Justin Dyck’s imagination pushes the boundaries of reality and the supernatural with how far two grieving grandparents, who have lost it all, would really go.

The Haunting Ending

Throughout the movie, it is hard to recognize who you should root for. On the one hand, there is the automatic fallback of rooting for the escape of the captive pregnant woman to which the cult rituals are happening. Similar to movies like Split, audiences want the captives to best their captors; however, the themes of this movie make the “bad-guy” hard to nail down.

On the other hand, viewers may empathize with the main characters. Sweet and grieving grandparents are hard to rationalize as the bad guy — especially when their reasoning for engaging in cult activity seems borderline reasonable. Losing a grandchild and child in the same lifetime is nearly unimaginable, and it is the kind of grief that can only be understood through experience. It’s no wonder they would go to any length to have their loved ones back, paying homage to the film title that these two grandparents really would do anything for their grandson Jackson.

However, as cult activity goes, there is a demonic twist. I don’t want to divulge too much because the ending of this movie wrapped up the horrifying storyline in a perfectly ominous way, but it’s safe to say that it really isn’t a good idea to turn to devil-worshipping in your geriatric years to resurrect a loved one. Reanimating the dead is not a novice level trick, and this movie clarifies what would happen to uninformed cult worshippers if they asked the devil for this kind of favor.

Some audience members may be happy about who makes it out in the end, and others might argue that nobody is safe after this ending. One thing is for sure, the ending of this movie is comparable to the likes of Ari Aster’s Midsommar or Leigh Janiak’s Honeymoon. It is the kind of cliffhanger that will haunt viewers for weeks — and leave you wondering about what really walks the grounds of the unknown.

A New Brand Of Horror

During this movie, I laughed — but I also hid behind pillows and contemplated the robust fear behind experiencing grief and loss. It touches on themes very similar to Ari Aster’s movies, which also approach grief and loss from a demonically twisted perspective; however, this film also is obviously a director’s first take at horror and an indie production.

The film has notes of juvenile storytelling and, at some points, drags on for longer than is comfortable, but the ultimate message of the film, as well as the haunting ending, makes it well worth the watch. If you are an indie horror fan, I highly recommend you check out Anything For Jackson, now streaming on Shudder.