Jack Be Nimble

In director Garth Maxwell’s 1993 gothic horror, twins Jack and Dora (late American actor Alexis Arquette and Kiwi Sarah Smuts-Kennedy) are separated while young; their adult reunion sees them battling the trauma of their past while being pursued by Jack’s sadistic step sisters. Complete with ESP, and a steam-driven hypnosis machine, Maxwell makes an exuberant and surreal contribution to the cinema of unease. New York Times’ Stephen Holden lauded the heady head-spinner as “a superior genre film” with a “feverish intensity that recalls scenes from Hitchcock and De Palma.” 

Warning: This content may offend some viewers. Viewer discretion is advised. 

If John Irving and Stephen King had collaborated to give us Garp and Carrie as twins separated at birth, they might well have come up with this strange New Zealand offering...

– British horror expert Kim Newman, reviewing the film in Empire

Key Cast & Crew

Donald Duncan

Cinematographer

Sarah Smuts-Kennedy

As: Dora

Alexis Arquette

As: Jack

Bruno Lawrence

As: Teddy

Garth Maxwell

Director, Writer

Jonathan Dowling

Producer