It might be a fictional character created by the filmmakers, but people like Cactus Jack exist, you can bet on that. You can see the Cactus Jack every time there is a school shooting, a murdering religious attack, any bombing on civilians, and more recently in the infamous USA Capitol events happening a few days ago in Washington. And it is not only an American thing, there are Cactus Jacks everywhere around the glove. So, although Cactus Jack (2021) might be a fictitious piece, the reality is not that far from fiction.
When an amateur documentarian sets out to make a film about a man who hasn’t left his mother’s basement in six months, he discovers the recluse is in fact a vile doomsday hatemonger. The tables are turned when the maniac snaps, imprisons him and takes control of the cameras to start a vitriolic, venomous podcast—making enemies far and wide and promising violent retribution.
Cactus Jack (2021) is the debut film as producers, writers, directors, and mainly the whole crew of Chris Thornton and Jay Thornton, The Thornton Brothers. The movie was shot almost exclusively on smartphones with a shoestring $25,000 budget in the filmmakers’ own basement with a cast of two and a crew of zero. It is described as the filmmakers as a found footage political horror film, a hybrid between Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver (1976), Oliver Stone‘s Talk Radio (1988), and Patrick Brice‘s Creep (2014). R. Michael Gull is the main star of the film, playing the title character.
“Cactus Jack (2021) may be a found footage horror film treatise on viral hate and the complicity of social media, but it is also a labor of love that took almost four years to make and in doing so has just grown more and more relevant and terrifying given the current state of the country and world in terms of racial injustice, tribalism, xenophobia, misogyny, political partisanship, and the violence associated with othering and domestic terrorist hate movements“,
A movie so focused on social media must have its own presence on the internet, so you can follow Cactus Jack (2021) online on its official channels on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The movie is scheduled to be out on January 22, 2021. Here you can watch its official trailer.
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