The Curse of Mediocrity
There are horror movies that scare you, horror movies that make you think, and then there’s Jessabelle—a movie that makes you wonder if your streaming service accidentally played the wrong file. Directed by Kevin Greutert (of Saw VIfame) and written by Ben Garant (of Reno 911! fame—yes, really), Jessabelle is the story of one woman’s return to her childhood home, her confrontation with family secrets, and her relentless battle with a script that seems to have been written by a haunted Magic 8 Ball.
If you’ve ever wanted to see The Skeleton Key rewritten by ChatGPT after three hurricanes and a bad bottle of bourbon, congratulations—you’ve found your film.
The Plot: Or, “How I Learned to Stop Walking and Love the Wheelchair”
We begin with Jessie (Sarah Snook), a pregnant woman whose life goes south faster than a gator on a slip ’n slide. In the opening five minutes, a truck T-bones her car, killing her fiancé, her baby, and any hope of this movie making sense. Now wheelchair-bound, Jessie returns to her estranged father’s home in Louisiana—a place where the wallpaper peels, the air hums with voodoo, and absolutely everyone makes bad choices.
Her father, Leon (David Andrews), greets her with the warmth of an unripe avocado and the emotional stability of a shotgun. Within minutes, Jessie finds a mysterious box of VHS tapes recorded by her dead mother (Joelle Carter), who delivers tarot readings directly to camera like she’s auditioning for Bayou QVC. The mom warns Jessie that a dark spirit is haunting her. Jessie’s response? “Cool, let’s keep watching!”
Spoiler: This goes poorly.
Sarah Snook: Too Good for This Swamp
Let’s be clear—Sarah Snook is a fantastic actress. She’s since gone on to win Emmys for Succession, proving that she can handle complex characters, nuance, and dialogue that doesn’t sound like it was exorcised from a soap opera. But in Jessabelle, she’s trapped in a cinematic swamp as sticky as the one her character nearly drowns in.
She tries—oh, she tries. Every line about ghosts, curses, and dead babies is delivered with total conviction, as if she’s hoping Daniel Day-Lewis might show up halfway through and adopt the movie out of pity. Sadly, her co-stars and the script are less cooperative.
Mark Webber plays Preston, the “old flame” who reenters Jessie’s life, bringing with him a truckload of exposition and a marriage he forgets about faster than the audience forgets his name. Their romantic tension feels about as natural as a voodoo doll at a Costco.
Daddy Issues and VHS Nightmares
The movie’s central gimmick—the haunted VHS tapes—is genuinely interesting on paper. Found-footage nested inside a traditional horror structure? There’s potential there. But Jessabelle takes this spark of originality and snuffs it out like Leon’s ill-fated attempt to burn the tapes (which, by the way, results in his own death by spontaneous combustion).
Each tape features Jessie’s dead mom delivering increasingly bizarre tarot readings that make less sense than a TikTok horoscope. “You are not who you think you are,” Mom whispers ominously, as Jessie nods like she’s watching a YouTube tutorial on cursed ancestry.
By the third tape, you’ve stopped caring about the “mystery” and started rooting for the ghost to just end it already.
The Ghost: Moist, Mysterious, and Mostly Confused
The film’s titular spirit, Jessabelle, is a pale, stringy-haired woman who enjoys long walks through bathtubs, whispering cryptic nonsense, and glaring menacingly at people who don’t deserve it. She’s the kind of ghost who would haunt your house, rearrange your furniture slightly, and then cry about it in the mirror.
The haunting scenes are textbook PG-13 horror: jump scares, slow pans, water imagery, and the occasional “is that a reflection or just poor lighting?” moment. None of it is particularly scary. The bathtub scene—where the ghost rises from the murky water—is supposed to be terrifying. Instead, it looks like someone dropped a goth mermaid into a home renovation show.
Even the final act’s big revelation—that Jessie is actually the adopted child of her mother’s voodoo affair and that Leon killed the real Jessabelle—lands with the dramatic weight of a damp tarot card.
The Bayou Setting: Mud, Mood, and Missed Opportunities
Louisiana horror films usually drip with atmosphere: moss-draped trees, candlelit rituals, jazz playing faintly in the background of your doom. Jessabelle, however, turns the bayou into a set so bland it could double as a fog machine testing facility.
The film flirts with Southern Gothic themes—race, religion, repression—but never commits. Instead, it settles for lazy voodoo stereotypes, because apparently nothing says “authentic Louisiana” like burning chicken bones and whispering Creole nonsense. It’s all window dressing with no soul—like a tourist trap that forgot to charge admission.
The Supporting Characters: A Swamp of Stereotypes
Every side character in Jessabelle feels like they wandered in from a different movie. There’s the wise old family cook who knows too much, the skeptical sheriff who dies knowing too little, and the local voodoo practitioner whose only purpose is to yell “Leave this place!” before disappearing forever.
Leon, Jessie’s father, spends his limited screen time oscillating between violent outbursts and casual bigotry, like a Southern-fried version of The Shining’s Jack Torrance—but with less charm and more beer. His fiery death scene should be tragic, but it’s shot like a malfunctioning barbecue commercial.
The Script: Where Dialogue Goes to Die
Ben Garant, best known for his comedy work, tries his hand at serious horror here—and it shows. The dialogue is unintentionally hilarious. Lines like “The past can’t hurt you, Jessie” are immediately followed by, you guessed it, the past physically hurting Jessie.
Characters explain everything multiple times, as if they’re afraid the audience wandered off to make popcorn (which, to be fair, is a reasonable assumption). There’s a constant sense that the film doesn’t trust its viewers—or its own story—to hold up without a running commentary.
The Twist Ending: Predictable as a Jump Scare
By the end, Jessie discovers she’s been the wrong Jessabelle all along—an adopted baby swapped in after the real one was murdered by her dad in a fit of racist rage. The ghosts of her real parents (Kate and Moses) push her wheelchair into the bayou so they can resurrect the biracial Jessabelle in her body.
It’s meant to be shocking. It’s not. It’s just confusing—and not in a fun Mulholland Drive way, but in a “wait, did I miss a memo?” way. When the final line—“It’s Jessabelle”—is delivered, it’s supposed to send chills. Instead, you’re mostly wondering if there’s still time to request a refund.
The Horror of Wasted Potential
The tragedy of Jessabelle isn’t its silliness—it’s its squandered potential. Sarah Snook could’ve anchored a haunting psychological thriller. Kevin Greutert could’ve made a moody Southern Gothic masterpiece. Instead, we got a Lifetime movie with jump scares.
The film tries to be The Sixth Sense meets True Detective, but it lands closer to Scooby-Doo: Bayou Betrayal.
Final Thoughts: Wheelchair, Meet Shark
Jessabelle is the cinematic equivalent of getting stuck in swamp mud: slow, messy, and frustratingly impossible to escape. It’s not scary enough to thrill, not campy enough to amuse, and not smart enough to haunt.
The only real ghost here is the specter of better movies it desperately wants to be.
Final Judgment
★☆☆☆☆ — One star, mostly for Sarah Snook’s valiant attempt to act her way out of the swamp.
Jessabelle proves that sometimes the scariest thing about a horror movie isn’t the ghost—it’s realizing you still have 40 minutes left to go.
