Watch Jessabelle For Free

Best movie of this year hands down!

I wanted to like it more than I actually did... But much of the humor totally escaped me and I walked out only mildly impressed.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The thing I enjoyed most about the film is the fact that it doesn't shy away from being a super-sized-cliche;

Producer Jason Blum of Paranormal Activity came up with another horror film about a woman who tries to face both her internal and external ghosts while trying to recuperate from an accident at her hometown in Louisiana in Jessabelle.It stars Sarah Snook in the title role. This film written by Ben Garant and directed by Kevin Greutert provides us a horror film wherein a woman tries to come face to face with spirits that have been tormenting her and would want to have absolute control of her as well as a resolution about unresolved issues and traumatic experiences they have both have had with each other.While the film has an interesting premise and had great potential,too bad that it ended up far from interesting and compelling.Also,it just ended up with very limited horrific scenes that would scare the audience and it accidentally ended up gross that it became funny and hard to watch.Added to that,it also lacked tension required for a horror movie and the story became far from original and refreshing especially for horror movie fans.Despite the good portrayal of Sandra Snook and the presence of the gorgeous Mexican actress Ana de la Reguera,it ended up as a disappointment.

Stumbled onto this by accident on cable and was delighted with the find.I like horror films, I have seen a lot, and it is no easy feat to catch my attention, but for the first 99% of this movie (more below), I was having a heck of a time...First, Sarah Snook. What a career she has ahead. She is charismatic and empathetic enough to carry this "lone woman by herself" story and hold the viewer's attention like glue. She seems like a normal character, the kind you might meet in the supermarket, then the camera will suddenly catch her at just the right angle and the entire screen fills up with those amazing eyes. A plus.The story (except for the last 5 minutes) is also a big plus. It seems like a demented version of the 1973 drama "Message To My Daughter" with Bonnie Bedalia, except here the mother leaving the message (joelle Carter) is possibly insane and the message is nothing short of terrifying.Another big plus is the supporting cast. David Andrews is just brilliant as the father whose erratic behaviour could scare the $%&% out any kid. When he finally comes to a bad end, even though he is the only friend that Snook's character has in the world, the audience actually feels relieved. That's acting.And Mark Webber as the "ex" who seems to be trying to help Snook out of compassion -- against the protests of his confused wife -- also nails his character dead on.Lots of spooky bits, more than a fair share of scenes that would make you regret watching it by yourself.In other words -- and I want to be clear on this -- going into the ninth inning we were way ahead on points and this film looked like a gem.And then you have the "twist reverse" ending, and a lot of the air suddenly seeps from the fun balloon.My job as a reviewer is to call 'em as I see 'em. Just keep in mind that the last 5 minutes may introduce a jarring note to the story, and try to get your enjoyment from everything that comes before.And you will confidently scared out of your wits.

Jessabelle is quite a competent horror film, whose screenplay begins on a conventional way in order to later get more interesting and complicated with unexpected twists and ingenious tangents soaked of the "voodoo" folklore associated to the marshes of Louisiana, in which the story is set. Director Kevin Greutert reduces the shocks and accentuates the atmosphere, making the film slow, but never boring due to the continuous evolution of the main mystery and the gradual revelation of details which lead us to a satisfactory ending. Then, we have the solid work from the whole cast, highlighting Sarah Snook, whose reactions to the supernatural phenomenons keep a credible balance between terror and curiosity, specially when her character finds the "messages" from her deceased mother. Those messages, in the shape of old VHS tapes, are a very appropriate trick to impulse the story and elevate its emotional level without forcing the drama. The cinematography and settings let us see the classic duality of the marshes: during the day, beautiful lagoons rounded by picturesque flora; and at night, decrepit mudflats which hide terrible secrets from the past. As for the effects and gore, there's nothing to say; as I said, Jessabelle keeps a tone of intimate and even psychological suspense, so don't expect any gore or terrifying creatures. This might disappoint some "hardcore" fans of horror, but I personally appreciated the sober direction, carefully constructed screenplay and moderate displays of horror, which are credible precisely because they don't exaggerate too much or obfuscate us with edition tricks, strident music or similar clichés from contemporary horror cinema. In conclusion, Jessabelle isn't a great film, but I liked it pretty much, and I think it deserves a recommendation. Besides, I think this film would be good material for a preteen sleepover: gloomy enough to provoke momentary anxiety, without causing psychological damage in a long term. Or at least, that's what I hope... don't blame me if the kids end up developing a phobia against the VHS tapes.

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.