Director – Jack Peter Mundy, Screenplay – Tom Jolliffee, Additional Writing – Scott Jeffrey & Jack Peter Mundy, Producers – Scott Jeffrey & Rhys Waterfield, Photography – James Morgan, Music – Andy Fosberry, Makeup Effects – Scott Jeffrey & Danielle Ronald. Production Company – Jagged Edge Productions.
Cast
Beatrice Fletcher (Eden), Jay O’Connell (Greg), Clint Gordon (Danny), Heaven-Leigh Spence (Tamsin), Abi Casson Thompson (Lulu), Antonia Whillans (Jill), Lee Hancock (Jack), Sofia Lacey (Janey Flannen), Jo Barker (Kelly Jane Fleming), Daisy Hamilton (Young Jill), Alfie Henton (Young Jack), Sarah T. Cohen (Bernice), Danielle Ronald (Carla)
Plot
A group of five friends head into the countryside on a hike in memory of their friend Lucas who committed suicide. It is particularly difficult for Eden who was involved with Lucas. They learn that there have been a number of disappearances of people around the area. As they set up camp, they are prey to Jack and Jill, the feral children of an asylum escapee, who attack and kill all whom they see as intruders on their territory.
The Legend of Jack and Jill was one of the productions from Scott Jeffrey who has become a prolific producer and sometimes director of low-budget horror films in the last few years. Jack Peter Mundy has acted as a cinematographer and drone camera operator on numerous of these, stepping up to direct the likes of Amityville Scarecrow (2021), Dinosaur Hotel (2021), Easter Bunny Massacre (2021), Monsters of War (2021) and Prototype (2022)
Around this period, Scott Jeffrey and associates embarked on a plan of making horror films loosely based on fairytales, nursery rhymes or popular children’s stories. See the likes of Curse of Humpty Dumpty (2018) and sequels, Toof (2019) and sequels about the Tooth Fairy, Easter Bunny Massacre and Curse of Jack Frost (2022). This culminated in the breakthrough hit of Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood and Honey (2023) with an announced slate of similar titles.
The point that should be made about some of Jeffrey’s fairytale/children’s story horror films is that they frequently have little or almost nothing to do with the original work. This is clearly evident when it comes to The Legend of Jack and Jill here. The original nursery rhyme, which dates from some time in the 18th Century, possibly the 17th, concerns two children:-
Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.
Jill (Antonia Whillans) and Jack (Lee Hancock)
And that is really all there is to the original. Some versions add other verses about them going home but there is not anything more to the story beyond two children climbing a hill to get some water and tumbling down. When it comes to the film, Jack and Jill have now become children fleeing up the hill with a mother who has escaped from an asylum. Rather than any tumbling down and breaking crowns, they have grown up and become feral children attacking any intruders on what they regard as their territory. They do have a pail with them but there is no mentioned intention to get any water and the pail is dropped and forgotten anyway.
The film tries to tell us that the two children were what inspired the nursery rhyme, although we are told the original incident with their mother occurred fifteen years ago and this somehow inspired a nursery rhyme over two centuries old. The other amusing thing is having their pail found by people wandering up the hillside and it looking brand new despite lying in the grass for fifteen years.
In effect what we have is Jack and Jill by way of The Hills Have Eyes (1977). Considered as what it is, a low-budget
Backwoods Brutality film, The Legend of Jack and Jill is competent no more than that. There’s an okay professionalism in the editing and photography, while the cast of unknowns is passable. On the other hand, without the hook of its title, the film is no more than routine filler.
