A good movie

Even though I have never been a huge fan of Lars von Trier, he still remains one of the most interesting directors at work nowadays, so I was quite eager to watch his last directing effort. Well, first of all, since von Trier had decided to make a serial killer flick, I was expecting something seriously hardcore, especially after the critics described it as being really violent, but, to be honest, I thought the violence was rather mild. Sure, there was a dozen of kills and even a mutilated duckling but I have seen much worse in this genre and even more so from this director. Not that I was disappointed, I mean, I have seen enough slasher flicks so I guess it was a relief that the Danish director didn't waste some of the running time with some torture scenes. Another very welcome surprise was that the damned thing was sometimes actually quite funny. Indeed, something similar happened with 'Nymphomaniac', von Trier has always been dealing with terribly dark, gloomy and vastly depressing, but with his last 2 projects, which were both still really bleak, there were some really unexpected humor which made the whole thing easier to swallow but also much more interesting to watch. I also enjoyed the fact that he pretty much dismantled the whole myth around serial killers. Indeed, even though Jack was supposed to be terribly smart, he constantly made some mistakes, left some huge clues, didn't care if there were some witness or not and he even admitted that he got lucky on various occasions. Eventually, the only issue I had was that the running time was just too long. Indeed, the pacing for the 1st incident involving Uma Thurman was fine but everything else afterwards could and probably should have been handled somehow more quickly. For example, during the 2nd incicent, Jack had to talk on the front door with his next victim and it seemed to take forever before he finally got in. With this incident, the same thing happened when he was supposed to leave the scene of the crime, it took him forever to finally leave the damned place (at least, the pay-off was rather priceless though). Anyway, to conclude, even though it won't go down as one of his best movies, I thought it was still a decent watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Lars von Trier's work. 

7/10