Jessabelle

Jessabelle

Starring Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, Joelle Carter, David Andrews

Directed by Kevin Geutert

The Story:
After suffering a car accident that kills her boyfriend and her unborn baby, Jessie (Sarah Snook) returns to her father Leon's (David Andrews) home due to the fact that she had her legs crushed in the crash, and has nowhere else to go.  The two have been estranged since the death of her mother Kate (Joelle Carter) after Jessie was born, and Leon kept Jessie's mother's room perfectly untouched since her death.

While searching the house, Jessie finds a series of videotapes that her mother made for her before she died.  She was a tarot card reader who seemed to suggest that Jessie is being haunted by a spirit, and soon Jessie begins experiencing strange phenomena in the house.  Her high school boyfriend Preston (Mark Webber) comes to help, and as she begins unraveling the clues, Jessie realizes that the spirit haunting her could actually be her.

The Synopsis:
While Louisiana is one of the states in the United States, in many ways it has its own identity fully set apart from the other 49 states, mostly due to the fact that the state is steeped richly in the practices of voodoo, which isn't really practiced anywhere else.  It gives the state a deeper feel of the unknown and mysterious, as many people tend to not fully understand what voodoo is.  It's not making a doll of your worst enemy and poking holes in it in hopes of having that person feel it - it goes much deeper than that.  Films like "The Skeleton Key" promote the use of voodoo (as well as hoodoo) and focuses on the supernatural aspect of the practice, and in a lesser way "Jessabelle" also incorporates the practice, but with a smaller budget, it becomes the lesser of the films, one that could've been spectacular if given a bigger budget, but instead just relegates itself to the mundane.

Sarah Snook (who is nearly a dead-ringer for Emma Stone) is a terrific underrated actress, especially in films like "Predestination," and here she captivates the camera as Jessabelle, although she goes by Jessie.  After her boyfriend and unborn son are killed in a crash, she's refined to a wheelchair, unable to use her legs.  She has to live with her distant father who lives in a house that time forgot (in all seriousness, the house is the best atmospheric part of the film - unfinished, dark, and even has a VHS player still), and it's here she finds videos from her long-dead mother.  The connection Snook shares with Joelle Carter - who plays Jessie's dead mother - is haunting, especially since the two don't share actual screen time together.  It's tender moments where we see the strong desire of both characters - Jessie in wanting to see her mother, and Kate wanting to protect her yet-unborn child.  If the film was more of a mystery like this, it would've been a lot better - but it's horror, so they have to throw in the jump scares and gross-out moments because that's what the genre calls for.

The most intriguing part of the film is the mystery Jessie has to solve regarding Kate's premonitions, and as she and her former boyfriend Prescott (who is married in the film to another woman, yet doesn't seem to mind spending more time with Jessie and made me wonder if he even had a job) investigate, they find an even bigger mystery at hand.  Then there's the spirit girl who screams a lot, not just causing me to jump due to the shock of the volume level, but also because I was so engrossed in the original story I kept forgetting this was a horror film.

Writer Robert Garant does a good job at delivering a solid mystery, but the script fails on a few levels: while Jessie is confined to a wheelchair, we never get the feeling that she's in more danger due to the fact of her limited mobility, and even though there's one scene where she mourns the loss of her unborn child, it's not really mentioned again.  Maybe they wanted to focus more on the horror than the practicalities of it, but those are two big pieces that should've had more in-depth moments.

While the film does a great job at piecing the clues together, it all comes to a hasty conclusion where Jessie expositionaly puts all the pieces together so quickly it almost seems redundant, with a finale that's typical and unsatisfactory for such a great lead-up.

The Summary:
Despite a strong lead and a solid mystery, "Jessabelle" abandons the strong mysterious focus it seemingly wanted to give and instead turned into a typical horror film with jump scares and gross-out moments that cheapen the entire ordeal.

The Score: B+