Review – Jake’s Closet

Poor little six-year-old Jake. His parents are going through a messy divorce. His only friend is a jerk. And now he’s got a zombie living in his closet. This picture starts out as part of a trend I’d like to encourage: movies that don’t have huge budgets but nonetheless manage to have decent production values, acceptable scripts and (except in the case of the child star here) good acting. Despite starting out on my good side, however, this ended up going downhill. The custodial mom is portrayed as a scheming nincompoop who – egged on by a vicious fellow-divorcee – starts dating an asshole and doing mean things to get back at her soon-to-be-ex. The portrayal of the woman is so cartoonish that it made me wonder if someone behind the scenes (writer? director?) was suffering some lingering bitterness about an ugly breakup. Then the picture loses a rating point when our youthful hero starts stealing neighborhood cats and cramming them into the basement for the zombie to eat. The ending is also a disappointment, or at least it would have been if “disappointment” didn’t connote “surprise,” which this certainly wasn’t. See if desperate