Lionsgate,
Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, Joelle Carter, David Andrews, Amber Stevens, Ana de la Reguera, Larisa Oleynik, Chris Ellis,
Jessie (Sarah Snook) is a young woman, pregnant and moving in with her sweetheart when a horrible accident leaves her in the hospital all alone. After several weeks in recovery she’s got no one to call but her estranged Father who still lives in the small bayou town in Louisiana where Jessie grew up. Dad has not been doing well since her Mom died, and it’s obviously very uncomfortable being staying there in her Mom’s old bedroom since it’s the only one on the first floor and she’s now in a wheelchair. But when Jessie finds some VHS tapes left by her mother, it starts her on a journey of nightmares and terror as a spirit is also in the house and is not going to let Jessie leave until she gets what she wants.
This is obviously a B horror movie, and one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. I enjoyed it so much, I took the time to watch it again with the filmmakers on the special features soundtrack. I learned a lot about what they went through to bring this movie to light. Some low budget horror is horribly done with cheap effects that is really boring, but not this story. First of all, they did almost all the effects in camera with either the actors or their stunt doubles. This gives a sense of realism to this film that most low budget horror films miss. I have to admit it may have been lovely redhead Sarah Snook who I was not familiar with previously, but now I’m a fan. She played this off perfectly, and was the perfect person to cast in the role of Jessie. The rest of the cast was very well done too, and so I have little to complain about the acting and dialog. I know they took great pains in tweaking this script in a way that did not depend on loud noises to make you jump, but rather took pains to develop the story. I have seen a lot of films that choose a run down old plantation that is so dark and spooky that it becomes the horror effect itself. You may notice they didn’t do that here. This home has obviously been neglected a great deal, but it not naturally scary in itself. We needed the slow build of tension to raise the terror level, and it was done well. Likewise, we’re not saddled with horrible maniacal creatures running around killing people right and left. Instead we’re faced with a real mystery of what possibly happened and poor Jessie is stuck in the middle of it without having done anything wrong herself. It’s one of those ghostly stories where someone wants the truth to come out and they just can’t rest until it’s done. This is filmed in a practical set, so the house inside and outside is used, the swamp is right outside the back, and everything is there, making it easy to shoot. The suspense is great, and I really enjoyed this film from start to finish. Fans of slasher gore films may not like the pacing of this film as they develop the story, but for me the tales of voodoo and the supernatural content was like a classic horror film of old, and I’m really glad that I got to see a film like this.
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