In five episodes, failed architect and vicious sociopath Jack recounts his elaborately orchestrated murders -- each, as he views them, a towering work of art that defines his life's work as a serial killer in the Pacific Northwest.
USA in the 1970s. We follow the highly intelligent Jack over a span of 12 years and are introduced to the murders that define Jack's development as a serial killer. We experience the story from Jack's point of view, while he postulates that each murder is an artwork in itself. As the inevitable police intervention is drawing nearer, he is taking greater and greater risks in his attempt to create the ultimate artwork. Along the way we experience Jack's descriptions of his personal condition, problems and thoughts through a recurring conversation with the unknown Verge--a grotesque mixture of sophistry mixed with an almost childlike self-pity and psychopathic explanations. The House That Jack Built is a dark and sinister story, yet presented through a philosophical and occasional humorous tale.—Zentropa Entertainments
Reflecting on his existence, disturbed Jack, a failed architect and sadistic serial killer, drones on about his twelve-year reign of terror to Verge, his unseen, enigmatic companion. To illuminate the significance of his systematic atrocities, Jack recounts five defining, randomly chosen incidents from his busy, blood-spattered life, making sure to include every single detail of his elaborate, revolting murders. But in Jack's eyes, these grisly killings are works of art. What will it take to create his magnum opus and end his brutal career with a bang?—Nick Riganas
Jack is a quiet, seemingly-harmless architect, working on building his dream house. One day, in a fit of annoyance and anger, he kills a woman to whom he had reluctantly given a lift. He discovers that he enjoys killing, and over the next 12 years he goes on a killing spree.—grantss
The story follows Jack, a serial killer with some artistic disposition, over the course of twelve years and depicts the murders that develop Jack as a serial killer. Throughout the film he has side conversations with Verge in between the depictions of the incidents, most of these revolve around discussion of philosophy, ethics or Jack's view of the world.
1st Incident
Jack (Matt Dillon) is driving down a road when he comes upon a woman (Uma Thurman) who has car trouble. She also needs to fix her broken jack. After some conversation and joking at one point that she shouldn't be in his van because he could very well be a serial killer. Jack agrees to take her to his mechanic, Sonny (Jack McKenzie). He fixes the tire jack, but when they both return to try and fix the car once again, the tire jack breaks. The woman asks to be brought back once again. This time however, Jack takes the tire jack and kills her with it. He then takes her body to an industrial freezer he had purchased to store it away.Jack hid her car in the bushes, where it was actually partly visible from the highway. But the police never investigated as luckily it was right at the border of 2 states and in "no man's land."
2nd Incident
Jack knocks on the door of another woman (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) and claims he's a cop who can help her out with her dead husband's pension. Eventually, he finds another angle as the woman is suspicious and says he's actually an insurance agent and can promise her more cash. The woman invites him in, and he strangles her but fails to completely kill her. She wakes up, and he offers her some water with crumbled-up donuts in it, in an attempt to make her choke to death which doesn't work, so he strangles her again and stabs her through her heart. However, his obsessions with trying to clean up every surface in the house nearly leads to his undoing as a suspicious cop (Edward Speleers) comes by. He then ties the woman's body to the back of the car and drags her body all the way to the industrial freezer. This left a trail of blood all through the streets through which Jack drove. Again, he got lucky as it rained that night, washing away the entire trail and evidence.Around this time Jack ends up giving himself the serial killer moniker "Mr. Sophistication."
3rd Incident
Jack takes a woman (Sofie Grabol) he is dating and her two sons, Grumpy (Rocco Day) and George (Cohen Day) out for a hunting lesson. Shortly after, he kills both sons using a sniper rifle at a distance and forces the woman to feed pie to George. He eventually ends up killing the woman. He takes the body of Grumpy, her other son, and, using his knowledge of taxidermy, re-arranges his face into a grotesque smile.
4th Incident
Jack meets Jacqueline (Riley Keough), a woman that he calls "Simple," as he believes her to be stupid. Jack confesses he has killed sixty people at this point and is the serial killer "Mr. Sophistication," but Jacqueline does not believe him and thinks he's lying. After he asks her for a marker, and proceeds marking red circles around her breasts, she tries to get away and tell a cop, but he dismisses her as a drunk. Eventually, Jacqueline fails to escape, and Jack cuts off her breasts with a knife and murders her. He pins one of the breasts to the Cop's car and fashions the other one into a wallet.
5th Incident
Jack has detained six people and tied them to a makeshift post, lining their heads up in a row with the intention of killing them all with one bullet, but he realizes that the bullet he bought from Al (Jeremy Davies) is not a full metal jacket bullet. Al refuses to sell the bullets and instead Jack has to go to the trailer of a man known as S.P (David Bailie). Knowing that the cops are looking for Jack, S.P. points a gun at Jack and thinks that he has caught him. Jack convinces him to drop his gun and kills him with a knife through his throat and then grabs the one bullet he needs. He then puts on S.P.'s red bathrobe and waits for the police to arrive as his van is now stuck in a ditch and he requires transportation. He kills the cop and steals his car, which he leaves outside his freezer space with the siren blazing. He tries to line up the shot but realizes it's too blurry. He finally succeeds in prying open a door at the back of the freezer that's always been stuck shut. He continues to try to line up the shot and sees Verge (Bruno Ganz) for the first time. Verge suggests that Jack has unfinished business and has never really built the house that he was intending to build. Using the bodies as material, Jack constructs a house out of them and when he enters the make-shift house, he sees a hole that leads down. At this point, the cops successfully torch through the door, and Jack decides to go through the hole, following Verge.
Epilogue: Katabasis
In an allusion to Dante's Inferno, Verge is actually the poet Virgil and is guiding Jack through Hell. At the very bottom of Hell there is a bridge and a vast dark space below. The door on the other side of the bridge leads out of Hell and presumably to Heaven as Verge tells Jack. The bridge is completely broken, but Jack notices that one could climb around the cliff and over to the other side, although Verge tells him that he recommends against it and that this is not where he is to deliver him. Jack ignores him and decides to try to climb over anyway. Jack fails and falls off the cliff down into the fiery abyss below.
