Jessabelle Review

Disclaimer: Contains spoilers!

Plot Summary: Recovering from a car accident, a girl discovers tapes from her deceased mother that reveal a horrible truth.

Review: This film started off excellently, with respectable scares, but it plummets downhill all too quickly. Exacerbating the situation is the overabundance of contrivances that feel like plot holes due the sheer implausibility of such a set of circumstances coming into existence. Once more, I'm disappointed, because the potential to tell an interesting tale was right there. However, between the laughable ending, pointless love story, and glaring story problems, it's hard to see this film as anything beyond a simple meh.

Instead of telling the story as it's presented, I will explain the events in chronological order to demonstrate the absurd nature of the contrivances. Once upon a time...a married couple in the '80s were expecting a baby girl they planned to name Jessabelle. Conveniently enough, the mom is diagnosed with cancer along the way or something. The mother decides to leave a series of tapes for Jessabelle so that she can see what her crazy mother was like. For some reason, the mom tries to tell the unborn Jessabelle's future using tarot cards, and, of course, this reveals that Jessabelle will meet a terrible end; surely, because tarot cards are infamous for their accuracy. The mom mentions, on the tapes, a vague reference to some voodoo priest named Moses who apparently taught her how to read tarot cards; this made little sense to me since Moses also went to the church of Jessabelle's parents. Voodoo...Christianity...a bit of a stretch that one guy would be active in both. At some point, Jessabelle is born, and is revealed to be half-black as the father was actually Moses. Surprise, the husband is angry. I'm not entirely sure the exact order of these events, but the husband kills Jessabelle in a fit of rage, shoots and burns Moses, and magically adopts the main character, Jessie, who is told she is the real Jessabelle later. These events coincide with the mother committing suicide after seemingly doing a ritual with Jessie and Moses' voodoo flunkies doing another ritual on Jessabelle that links the two girls' souls.

Shortly after this, Jessie is sent to live with her aunt, whom we never meet, and just happens to live in the same town. Jessie grows up believing herself to be Jessabelle, rarely speaks with her "father," and no supernatural shit happens as far as we know. In her teens, Jessie dates some dude, named Preston, that will become annoyingly important later on, until she moves out of the town for college. At some point, Jessie, in her twenties, conveniently gets into a car accident with her new boyfriend that kills him and leaves her unable to walk. This forces Jessie to move back to the town and live with her estranged "father" as she finds herself haunted by Jessabelle...for no apparent reason. Furthermore, Jessie finds those dumb tapes and believes they are meant for her, but doesn't realize they're for the real Jessabelle. Jessie reunites with Preston as he's all too eager to leave his wife, Alex Mack, in order to get back with Jessie. Jessie and Preston unravel the mystery until the ghosts of the mom and Moses appear out of thin air so they can swap Jessie's soul for Jessabelle. The film then ends with Jessabelle now alive, Jessie off in Kayako-land or wherever, and Jessabelle probably eager to screw Preston. The final line of the film is delivered so poorly I burst out laughing.

At no point is it ever explained why Jessabelle decides to haunt Jessie at this particular moment. I mean, were these ghosts just sitting around waiting for this ridiculous series of events to occur? Wait, let me guess, they could see the future with the tarot cards, huh? Oh, and why did the ghosts wait all these years to kill the dad? Talk about biding your time. Don't even tell me the movie claims watching the tapes is what awakened the ghosts?! I liked how the boyfriend was completely forgotten about and Preston ditches his wife so casually. Actually, the film's morality bothered me since Jessie gets screwed the most for doing nothing wrong. I don't mind the villains winning, but they need to be likable and a cheating mom, some dude named Moses, and a wannabe Kayako aren't exactly wooing me. Although, I should mention, the real Jessabelle, played by Amber Stevens, is pretty cute under the makeup effects. And how the fuck do you manage to adopt a kid shortly after giving birth? Nobody questions this? Nobody wonders, "hey, what happened to your other kid?" Come on, man...this is supposed to be a town in the boonies. These events are glossed over far too easily and the gravity of the crimes downplayed too much! Finally, is the name Jessabelle supposed to be a, not so subtle, play on Jezebel? Uuughhh.

Overall, this film dropped the ball. The first half hour has great atmosphere and establishes an engaging mystery, but that goes out the window fast. One of the biggest mistakes was showing the real Jessabelle's face too soon when her makeup effects are nothing to write home about; that's a big no-no in a film relying on its ghost to be the main source of scares. There is also way too much time spent on the drama with Jessie and Preston. Unfortunately, I could not get over the contrived nature of the plot and how there appears to be no discernible reason for anything to happen at this specific moment when these events should have happened long ago. On top of that, the fact that Jessie wasn't the real Jessabelle was beyond predictable even if you couldn't, necessarily, guess what direction they were taking the story. I'm going to say give this one a pass, but I'll stress that it's more on the disappointing side than actually a bad movie.

Notable Moment: When the ghost appears in the wheelchair, behind the curtain, for the first time. This slow buildup of the scares was a missed opportunity for sure.

Final Rating: 5.5/10