Film Review Jethica: A witchy movie all around

The chasm that exists betwixt most 21st-century Americans in addition to their dead is unnatural. For the bulk of human history, decease has been a normal, even mundane, function of life: The term “wake” comes from the tradition of bodies spending an extended menstruation propped up inward the parlor before burial. (You accept to make sure they’re really dead.) “Jethica” seems like a flick made past people who already knew that morbid fact. And the celluloid’sec oddball betoken of thought—which includes its own kooky-poignant vision of the afterlife—is its most appealing trait.

“Jethica” has a casual attitude towards decease too interacting with the dead that is, in a word, witchy. This is a witchy flick all around, featuring multiple scenes of its protagonist lighting candles on her altar in addition to some practical necromancy that’second presented inwards the same nonchalant tone equally scenes of characters pumping gas. Director Pete Ohs collaborated amongst his cast to create the screenplay for “Jethica,” as well as the cacophony of voices inward the script evokes the cacophony of talkative spirits hanging around the moving-picture show'second edges. This is a foreign cinema all around, distractible together with total of Olympic-grade tonal gambits. Viewers’ mileage will vary. Wildly.

Even the framing device is odd: “Jethica” opens with Elena (Calle Hernandez) hooking upwardly alongside a guy inwards the backseat of his motorcar, and so begrudgingly humoring his plea for her to tell him something, anything, nearly herself. And therefore she tells him a story nearly the time she was laying low inward her grandma’sec trailer—you’ll detect out why—in the center of hardscrabble nowhere outside of Santa Fe. In a coincidence that strains credulity far more than than whatsoever of the celluloid’second supernatural elements, before long later her arrival in New United Mexican States Elena runs into an erstwhile friend from high schoolhouse, Jessica (Ashley Denise Robinson), at a deserted gas station. Elena approaches Jessica alongside friendly intentions as well as gets an evasive reply. Still, the offering of an isolated hideout seems to appeal to Jessica, and she agrees to follow Elena back to the trailer.

There, Jessica confesses the argue for her shifty-eyed impromptu road trip: She’second fleeing a stalker, Kevin (Will Madden), who tracked her across the land from Los Angeles to Santa atomic number 26. (Kevin has a lisp, which explains the film’s title.) As it turns out, Elena is uniquely qualified to assist: She’s a witch, together with her grandma was as well. The trailer is protected past a spell, in addition to no 1, living or dead, tin breach it. Now, Elena’second powers don’t extend to banishing the ghosts who wander around her grandma’second property, distinguished from the living past their lost expressions and a layer of greyness foundation. But the ghosts mightiness live able to assist Jessica amongst her Kevin problem.

“Jethica”’second ghosts are lonelier than its living humans overall, by and large because they’re alone able to touch each other. (Their hands exceed through the living, like inwards “Ghost.”) Other than that, in that location’s not much departure betwixt the living as well as the dead in this film. Both are hanging around, purposeless, haunted past the past, in addition to paralyzed by the time to come. And the celluloid’sec quirky, sardonic approach to its ghost story is refreshing, every bit is the lack of fright amongst which its characters face up the dead people inwards their forepart yard.

Ohs’ sense of humor recalls that of “May”’s Lucky McKee or “Excision” director Richard Bates Jr., but drier. And, as alongside those directors, when ane of Ohs’ jokes lands, it really lands. And when it doesn’t, it actually doesn’t. “Jethica”’s comedic instinct is to make Kevin the butt of the joke, which seems right; if anyone should be mocked here, it’sec the psycho stalker. But the mode Ohs as well as his co-writers get almost this is past letting Kevin rant at length nigh how he but loves Jessica therefore much in addition to 1 mean solar day she’ll come across that we’re meant to live together—a tactic that simultaneously repels the audience (seriously, he’sec really annoying) in addition to softens the edges of Kevin’sec crimes.

At one indicate, Madden paces together with monologues for a full iv minutes, which highlights the film’s other fatal flaw: Even at a cut back 70 minutes, “Jethica” feels padded out, similar a smashing thirty-minute short rattling around inside of a feature film. In practise, this means lots of lingering shots on the mountain valley that surrounds Elena’s grandma’sec trailer. Again, this impulse is understandable: An independent film has to get its production value where it can, too the stark New United Mexican States landscape inwards winter does add significant natural beauty to the film. But it also slows downward an already unhurried film.

The best mode to describe “Jethica” is every bit a deadpan comedy laid inwards a horror-motion picture universe, amongst the upside-downward morality as well as pitch-black humor that the description implies. Bits from famous horror movies are lifted for comedic purposes: Take the cinema’sec use of Goblin-esque musical cues accompanied by Romero-esque shambling whenever a new ghost is introduced. This cheekiness is pleasing, as well as the originality of Oh’second vision cannot be denied. But it’second also impossible to ignore that “Jethica” is somehow both chaotic together with irksome—both, often, to a error. Still, an ambitious misfire is e'er preferable to something safety together with flavorless. And null well-nigh “Jethica” is prophylactic.