Film Jessabelle

[Terry Chavarin]

Jessabelleis a 2014 American supernatural horror film directed and edited by Kevin Greutert and written by Ben Garant.[3] The film stars Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, David Andrews, Joelle Carter, and Ana de la Reguera. The film was released by Lionsgate on November 7, 2014.

Jessie, who is pregnant, is about to move to her fianc, Mark's house when their car is hit by a truck just when they are backing up their car from the driveway, killing Mark and causing Jessie's miscarriage. Two months afterward, Jessie, who now uses a wheelchair, moves in with her estranged father, Leon, in St. Francisville, Louisiana. She resides in her mother's former bedroom. Her mother, Kate, died due to a brain tumor shortly after she was born, with Leon subsequently leaving her to be raised by her aunt.

One day, Jessie finds a box containing four videotapes shot by Kate. Addressing Jessie by her full name, she congratulates her on her 18th birthday and gives a tarot reading about Death that tells of a transition, taught to her by a friend whom she met at a local church. Kate warns that an unwanted presence is haunting Jessie, a reading that turns out to be true, as Jessie feels that a gaunt black-haired woman is haunting her ever since she moved back into her father's house. Jessie also has a vivid dream where she is strapped to a bed by her mother and witnesses a voodoo ritual being conducted, where blood flowing into a breathing machine chokes her. Leon repeatedly tries to dissuade Jessie from watching the tapes by breaking the first one and throwing Jessie's wheelchair into the bayou.

One day, Jessie has a frightening encounter in the bathtub with the same woman during a physical therapy session. After lifting Jessie onto Kate's old wheelchair, Leon coerces her physical therapist into leaving the house. After telling Jessie that the Kate in the tapes is not her mother due to the tumors she had, Leon attempts to burn all of the tapes, but a supernatural force burns him alive inside the yard shed.

During Leon's funeral, Jessie reunites with her high school friend, Preston, but collapses after she sees a severely burned man (Vaughan Wilson). After Preston leaves from tending to Jessie, she watches the third tape, which was focused on Leon and Kate in an outing and their Christmas party with the announcement of the latter's pregnancy, and the fourth tape, in which it focused on the foretold tarot readings and Kate tearfully shouting "You're dead!" before the footage cut off. After watching the tape, Jessie notices the woman behind her in the mirror. The mirror then shatters, and Jessie discovers a small secret compartment holding a tape (that wasn't found in the box) with no label on it that she opts not to watch. The next day, Jessie and Preston head across a nearby bayou, which Jessie has been suspicious of since observing glittering light and flames appearing there. The two discover voodoo icons and effects, as well as a grave of "Jessabelle" with a baby's skeleton, dated on Jessie's birthday, which they turn over to Sheriff Pruitt for DNA testing. Jessie and Preston then visit the house of Mrs. Davis, the mother of one of their friends and the Laurents' former family cook, who speaks about Moses Harper, Kate's aforementioned friend from her church mentioned in the second tape. Thinking that Moses may be involved in supernatural occurrences, the two head to Moses' voodoo shrine in a ruined church, but are attacked by a group of men who force them to leave.

The two return to Jessie's home where Preston confesses that, despite being married, he is in love with Jessie. Preston offers to let Jessie live with his mother, which she accepts. Just before Jessie can finish her packing; Preston is attacked by the ghostly woman and knocked unconscious.

Now left alone, Jessie conducts a ritual to summon the woman. After the ritual, Jessie is called by Pruitt, who informs her that the baby was Kate's daughter, but not Leon's. She plays the blank tape which presents Kate casting a voodoo enchantment on a newborn white girl and committing suicide by gunshot, not before tearfully shouting that Jessabelle and her father Moses are dead, attempting to suffocate the infant girl with a pillow, and changing her mind to conduct the incantation. Jessie is confronted by Kate's spirit and realizes the truth that her "father" was hiding from her: the videotapes filmed were for Jessabelle, who was the daughter of Kate and Moses as the product of an interracial affair at the same church mentioned in the second tape. Jessabelle was killed on the night of her birth, along with her father, by Leon. On that night, Leon scolded Kate for being unfaithful, picked up Jessabelle from her crib, and snapped her spine in half. After Kate laments as she holds her daughter's now-lifeless body, Leon pushed a baby carriage carrying her lifeless body and a porcelain doll inside into the bayou, weighing it down with stones to prevent it from resurfacing. Leon then drove up to Kate and Moses' church where he shot Moses and set the building ablaze, leaving Moses for dead in the burning church. Jessie realizes that she is the unwanted presence, being the newborn white girl adopted by Leon on that same night to cover up the murders.

Swearing revenge, Kate and Moses planned to transfer Jessabelle's spirit to Jessie. Jessie is pushed by Kate and Moses' spirits towards the bayou and into it, where the biracial spirit of Jessabelle swims up and takes her mother's bracelet, resurfacing back in the same white physical body of Jessie. Preston jumps in to save her and she kisses him and asks him to take her home. When Pruitt asks "Miss Laurent" if she is all right, she replies "It's Jessabelle".

Greutert was approached to direct Jessabelle a year after the release of Saw 3D and, after reading through the script, agreed to direct.[4][5] Filming was initially meant to take place in Louisiana, where the film is set, but was forced to move to Wilmington, North Carolina after no appropriate filming location could be located.[4] in April 2012, it was reported Amber Stevens, Ana de la Reguera, Sarah Snook and Mark Webber had all been cast in the film.[6]

Greutert edited the film on his own and initially, the film was slated to release on January 10, 2014,[7][8]The film was later pushed back to an August 29 release date before it was given a limited release and video on demand release on November 7.[9][10]

Fangoria was more positive in their review, writing "If the buildup is more satisfying than the payoff, Jessabelle remains a creditable attempt to do something a little different and down-to-Earth on the paranormal scene."[20]

There are a lot of dark family secrets in "Jessabelle," involving drawers of forgotten objects, Voodoo ceremonies in the woods, and VHS tapes containing ominous messages from beyond the grave. Steeped in Southern Gothic melodrama, "Jessabelle" is interesting in some of the small details, and in its strong sense of the Louisiana bayou atmosphere, and then it completely falls apart when it starts being a horror film. The trauma in the family story is full of potential, having to do with identity and how Jessabelle understands her own life, but all of that is short-changed for cheap scares that just are not scary enough and a preposterous plot that won't withstand the most cursory examination. Director Kevin Greutert, after directing multiple entries in the "Saw" franchise, feels adrift in tamer material. He responds to the Flannery O'Connor-esque qualities of the script (written by Robert Ben Garant), and there are details there that ring really true, but then he falls back on a lot of tired tropes from other horror films, missing the mark almost every step of the way.

In the opening scene, Jessabelle (Sarah Snook) is about to move in with her boyfriend: she's pregnant and they are both excited. On their way to the new place, they get into a car accident. He dies, she loses the baby, and her legs are crushed. Wheelchair-bound now, she moves home to live with her gloomy father (David Andrews). Jessabelle's mother died when Jessabelle was a baby; she and her father barely speak to one another when she returns home. Expressionless, he leads her through the house to the dead mother's old bedroom, untouched since her death. Jessabelle will sleep there since it's on the ground floor.

The house is the scariest element of the film; it is a masterpiece of a set (Jade Healy was production designer). Red brick on the outside, with tiny squinting windows, it is yawningly empty on the inside, rooms careening off into the distance, unfurnished except for random gigantic cupboards and cabinets shoved up against the walls. It feels like a place where time has stopped. Seen mainly from Jessabelle's point of view, rolling through it in her wheelchair, the house is disorienting. You never get the real lay of the land. You never see the upstairs.

Jessabelle keeps seeing and hearing strange things in the house. She glimpses a strange girl with long black hair (reminiscent of the girl from "The Ring") through the sheer curtains hanging around her mother's bed. (Despite how frightening the vision was, Jessabelle keeps closing those curtains every night, making one think she enjoys being terrified). In a box hidden under the bed, Jessabelle finds VHS tapes containing video-taped messages made for her by her mother (Joelle Carter) in the last months before giving birth. The mother, at first, is filled with joy and anticipation, bringing tears of happiness to Jessabelle's eyes as she watches. Soon, though, a dark foreboding mood intrudes (Joelle Carter is rivetingly uneasy in the role, leaning forward to whisper to the camera, "Don't tell Daddy about the Tarot cards.")

In a fit of fury, Jessabelle's dad throws out the video tapes and also tosses her wheelchair into the lake. Things go south from there. Jessabelle finds an unlikely ally in a high school boyfriend named Preston (Mark Webber), who is married and yet seems to have a ton of free time to drive Jessabelle around as she investigates her past. Their journey leads them deep into the bayou, and involves Voodoo altars, strange graveyards, and an old white-haired woman with giant terrified eyes moaning a Creole chant. Some of this ends up having undeniable racist implications, the black characters presented as completely "Other," with no humanity whatsoever, just frightening creatures with strange rituals emanating hostility and evil.

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