Jessie and her boyfriend finally decide to move in together and realize the dream of building a family, which is already about to grow in number with the child the girl carries in her womb. As unfortunately happens in many cases, fate puts a spoke in the wheels and a tragic road accident takes the man's life and forces the woman to lose the child and to stay in a wheelchair for a few months. To spend the convalescence period, the woman decides to return to her father's house where she grew up, in southern Louisiana. The stay does not go as planned and soon Jessie realizes that the house is haunted by supernatural presences linked to the past of her mother, who disappeared when she was little, and to mysterious rituals that reveal uncomfortable and surprising truths.
The latest cinema seasons are increasingly confirming a worrying trend in the horror scene that sees a lowering not only of the average quality of the products, rather mediocre, but also of the number of annual films due to glaring production difficulties that even the great masters of the genre have to face, just think of names like Carpenter and Romero. The only happy island is represented by BlumHouse, an American production company that for almost a decade has played the leading role as far as cinema releases are concerned, whose peculiar characteristic is the variety of themes and styles of its films; it ranges,
in fact, from the classic haunted houses by ghosts of various kinds to political horror films, passing through the much discussed and criticized mockumentaries of which the "Paranormal Activity" saga is the symbol. The recipe of the industry directed by Jason Blum is very simple: make low-budget projects with the aim of making big box office profits. But such a formula is not always synonymous with quality, and this explains why the products of the BlumHouse oscillate between optimal quality levels and mediocre ones. An intermediate category belongs instead to the new work of Kevin Greutert who, after having linked his name for years to the "Saw" saga first as an editor and then as a director of the last two chapters, leaves behind the bloodbaths and the dynamics of torture porn to dedicate himself to a ghost story with good premises, but with a stuttering development in many points.
"We are our demons", this phrase by the German writer Goethe seems to be the model of inspiration for Greutert in setting up this story of
ghosts with a veiled psychological vein and capable only at times of transmitting the sense of unease necessary in a similar story. The director explores a universe very distant from our Western culture, but precisely for this reason even more unsettling, namely that of black magic and voodoo, here seen in the form of reading the future through cards, sacrificial rites and spirits that return from the past. The ingredients therefore seem to be the right ones and indeed the first part abounds with moments of effective tension and realized with a refined style, above all the sequence in which the ghost appears through a curtain thus creating a suggestive see-don't-see effect. Another great strong point is the choice of settings both for the interiors and the exteriors; in the first case it is the most classic of the villas lost in the countryside with a Gothic flavor and
valorized by a rarefied and oniric photography, in the second instead the reference goes to the swampy and foggy plains of Louisiana, not surprisingly the setting of many horror films (above all "The Skeleton Key" with which Guetert's film also shares the theme of voodoo).
The good points, however, end here to make room for numerous defects that, especially in the second part, undermine the good outcome of the film in an implacable way. As the minutes go by, in fact, the story shows evident script holes, predictable moments and a series of elements only hinted at, but never developed at all, as in the case of the character of the mother who manifests herself through old VHS tapes. If we add to this a poor characterization of the characters, a founding element in a ghost story that focuses a lot on the weaknesses and pains of each of them, we understand how "Jessabelle" loses consistency until it aligns on the tracks of struggling sufficiency. Less than sufficiency deserves also the make-up of the specter that winks at the model of Japanese films, with the result of appearing only a poor copy.
The cast, as good BlumHouse tradition, is made up of actors not very famous to the general public and among these the only one to provide a really convincing performance is Sarah Snook (in the role of Jessie) while the other interpreters, Joelle Carter and Mark Webber, appear impalpable and little incisive.
"Jessabelle", in conclusion, is a work that manages to entertain without enthusing, that ends up losing itself in the endless sea of merely commercial products.
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