Actuakers
One of my all time favorites.
Chirphymium
It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional
Bumpy Chip
It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.
Filipe Neto
This film tells the story of Jessabelle, or Jessie, a girl who went to live with an aunt as a child after her mother's death. When she breaks both legs in a car accident, she's forced to return to her father's house, which is a stranger to her. In her old paternal home, she will rediscover the memories of her late mother, as well as a spirit of her past that will disturb her. The script is, thus, explained in few words and does not seem to bring additions to the traditional ghost story: a girl who is forced to discover an obscure part of her past by the supernatural intervention of a ghost. However, despite this lack of originality, the script works well and the story is well done. It takes place in rural Louisiana and makes good advantage of traditional black cultures and beliefs, such as vodoo and African witchcraft. Perhaps this use of vodoo is, in fact, the only remarkably uncommon note in this film. The end is based on a very nice and surprising twist plot, cutting the predictability that is felt throughout history.Sarah Snook did a good job in the lead role, and the supporting cast does a competent job as well. What I would most emphasize, however, is the good performance of the director, who has shown himself capable of horror without recourse to liters of false blood and limb amputations, as he was accustomed to doing in the "Saw" franchise. Cinematography is good but not brilliant. The scares are good, but don't properly frighten those who are inveterate fans of horror movies. It's enough, however, to cause some discomfort and tension, which is also pleasant.
Matt_Layden
When I first saw the trailer for this film, I thought to myself; "Wow, now that seems like it could be a tense film, she's stuck in a wheel chair the whole time". I stand by that comment; any horror film with the main character being terrorized or haunted and they are stuck, immobile, will lead to greater stakes. That individual can't run away, they can't really hide, they're stuck. I was game to see this flick.Jessabelle tells the tale of a young beautiful woman who has her dreams cut short by an accident, which leaves her unable to walk. Confined to a wheel chair, she calls her absentee father to come and pick her up. She moves in with him and finds these old VHS tapes around the house with messages from her mother, whose dead, about Jessabelle's fate. You guessed it, her fate isn't looking to good. Her mother see's death, torture and ghosts in poor Jessabelle's future and her future lurks behind every corner. Okay, so now we have a main character, physically confined to her chair. The threat isn't really tangible, it's a ghost, so that can come out of nowhere. You're not safe in any room, any corner, or under any sheets. Great, this is good news, the tension will come....the tension will come....I'm sure the tension will eventually come....the tension never came.Jessabelle disappoints me so much in that area. Not once did I ever really fear for her character. Sure things get a little creepy, but those scare tactics are clichéd and tired out. Even the added bonus of our disabled character, couldn't save the film from that. This film only works, barely, due to the performance from Sarah Snook. Snook was nominated in last years Mofo Film Awards for her role in Predestination. She failed to win, but did indeed turn some heads. She does so again, for me at least, with her honest performance here. She's beautiful, but that doesn't define her character, as so many horror movie characters go that route. Here, Snook gives Jessabelle some depth and some empathy, something a lot of horror flicks lack. So Jessabelle earns some points there.The final reveals fail to live up to the moderate build up. So the end result is a poor result all around. The film lacks a lot of much needed scares and more importantly, tension and fear for the well being of our main character here. If Jessabelle looks like an interesting film to you, don't be fooled, it's not.
chaos-rampant
A girl suffers a traumatizing accident and has to go back to the paternal nest somewhere in the bayous to put herself together. The turmoil begins to take shape outside, upsetting reality; ghosts or madness?So all told, you will peruse this as a generic film of its kind. But there's something worth talking about here, an entry that lets us see how horror is a multilayered response to fracture, much more so than any masked goon stalking around campus or ghosts in a house generally show. This is what I mean. The girl retrieves old videotapes of her long dead mother from a drawer, filmed while she was pregnant, so right off the bat we have a desire for communion, contact, memory. The mother inside the tapes happily beams and jokes about the day her daughter will see them; life, and by extension the inner life of memory that holds the image of loved ones, could be as simple as this. Here's where it gets really interesting. The mother (still inside the tapes) begins to read the cards to her unborn daughter. Card reading is only another facet of the most common human folly; we are not content with the few simple certainties of life, and so a desire for the future to be known, for narrative to be surmised. Suddenly the cards, images within images of the tape, reveal something horrible, horror that is nowhere yet except the images suggest it.And this goes on to cast a spell on the viewer-daughter who begins to anticipate nightmare the imagined narrative inside the tape warns is coming, which gives rise to hallucination. Per generic rules of horror, this is indeed later made concrete with a shift to voodoo, an actual spell that has been cast, to avenge something horrible from a dark past.This leads to a series of twists that culminate with one that goes back and rewrites the whole story, which in the generic context make for just a very cool backstory. The tapes were not intended as we thought they were, the narrator (the mother) not vested with the role we thought.But if you free it up from the context of genre, ruminate on what has indeed happened, it becomes powerful stuff. See, the mother began to read the cards that day, in so doing had an intuitive flash of premonition, inspired by the chance turn of symbolic images. Sure enough this comes to pass, not because foreshadowed by arcane forces, but because people can be shamed into violence. A spell is cast as per local folklore. But in the tapes all that is preserved is the horrible intuition, the premonition, and this goes on to spellbind the daughter to investigate, thus bring to light, that it did happen as presaged.So, in a commonplace viewing this is generic horror, ghosts exist and demand atonement. The last twist is beyond silly, the most generic of all. But in an abstract viewing that does away with certainties, it lends itself to powerful stuff on intuitive apprehension, which is at the bottom of self and how we know reality, all inside this backstory anchored in the tapes which only on the top end give rise to the horror we're watching.
Nitzan Havoc
After watching the trailer for this film, I must say I had really high hopes. As a devout Horror fan with a declared preference towards ghost stores and haunting, I had looked forward to seeing another usual film of the genre, mediocre yet good and fun to watch.While Jessabelle is light-years away from competing with the sub- genres best like The Grudge or Dead Silence, it completes the task it unofficially took upon itself, as it obviously had no intentions of being profound or in any way great. Sarah Snook, while definitely not painful to look at to say the least, is far more than your usual Horror Eye-Candy made famous in classic Slashers. Trust me, this professional knows a hell of a lot more than screaming convincingly and looking fine in a bathing suite. This was my first encounter with her, and I must say she just might be the best thing about Jessabelle. Apparently she's been making quite a name for herself since 2012, and I can definitely see why. Even though her character is stuck in a wheel-chair, the empathy towards its desperation and helplessness is greatly created by Snook's acting skills.As for the story, it suffers from one of the known banes of Horror - a mediocre plot twist leasing to an anticlimactic ending, after a finely made build-up. At least there is a plot twist, true, as Horror films are highly upgraded by these in my opinion, but the one in Jessabelle simply feels unfulfilled. I find it difficult putting my finger on what should have been better about it, I just know it didn't create the sensation we expect from such twists. I believe that was the main reason for the ending being slightly wanting.All in all, I found Jessabelle to be quite average, meaning anyone who doesn't expect to have their mind blown and being swept off their feet by a masterpiece could enjoy it quite a bit, as I did. Snook's acting and the sufficiently smart plot make it even slightly above average. As always, I would recommend that you ignore my humble opinion, watch it and judge for yourselves. If you ask me - as far as this one is concerned, it's definitely worth it.
