1.5/5 Jessabelle The only other two movies on Kevin Greutert’s directorial resume include Saw VI and Saw 3D: The Final Chapter. He cut his teeth in the editing department, working with directors as talented as James Cameron and as hacked as Michael Bay. Judging on Jessebelle, he picked up more from the latter. When you look at it from that perspective (the Saw movies, Armageddon), his latest is an instant classic. Well, let’s not take it too far; Jessabelle is still a horrendous piece of horror and one of the year’s worst movies. The story follows Jessabelle (Sarah Snook) as she goes from happily engaged to unhappily stuck in a wheelchair to even more unhappy living in her Louisiana hometown with her creepy drunk of a dad. Things pick up for “Jessie” when she finds a slew of old VHS tapes her late mother left her. Oh, so this is one of those kind of movies? Yes, it is. Jessie learns that her mother, played by Justified’s Joelle Carter, took up tarot cards from the local hoodoo king Moses before her demise. We then see a series of ominous readings that spook both Jessie and her mom. The characters that make up this world are either thinly drawn or acted so poorly that they come off as unintentionally creepy (e.g., the dad, here old high school friend Preston). The only actor that comes close to a convincing performance is Snook. She never really gets the chance to spread her wings, though, seeing as how she spends most of her time trying to nail down her Southern accent. Jessabelle has potential to be a truly eery film just with the setting alone. True Detective made great use of the bayou and its voodoo history. This movie, however, falls back on familiar tropes such as the haunted video tape (The Ring) and the pale, creepy girl with stringy hair covering her face (The Ring and every other horror movie out there). Not only does it fail to take advantage of numerous opportunities, but it actually feels mildly racist in its placement of the Haitian voodoo fiends as the ultimate bad. This sort of artistic laziness is just the type of thing that has basically eliminated horror as a viable, respected genre. Thanks to Greutert (and his equally damaging Saw franchise), we now have yet another disaster to add to his growing pile of cheap thrills and predictable scares. Jessabelle should have no trouble fitting in to Greutert’s torture porn legacy. (Available on iTunes) | Director: Kevin Greutert Starring: Sarah Stone, Joelle Carter Writer: Robert Ben Garant |
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Jordan JamesArchives
January 2016
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