King Jack

Writer-director Felix Thompson's largely unlikable drama stars Charlie Plummer as Jack, a clueless young teen living in a harsh family environment with an overwhelmed and emotionally remote mom (Erin Davie), a ne'er-do-well older brother (Christian Madsen) and—temporarily—a younger cousin named Ben (Cory Nichols), whose distant mother suffers from mental illness. The larger community in which Jack is immersed is also a snake pit of adolescent cruelty, bullying, and shaming, where a desperate Jack resorts to sexting photos of his genitals to a girl in order to get her attention. Roaming through life without meaningful purpose, Jack is caught up in a cycle of escalating violence with the bigger, older Shane (Danny Flaherty), who repays each of Jack's salvos with far worse brutality. Things come to a head when the smaller, younger, and very vulnerable Ben comes into Shane's crosshairs, and the self-involved Jack does little to protect him. Although that crisis is eventually sorted out in an admirable act of self-sacrifice, getting there is an insufferably mundane slog through dull-witted kid rituals of Truth or Dare and dialogue straight out of teenage wasteland. Not recommended. (T. Keogh)