Jessabelle

This movie is the plot of Peter Medak's Changeling with the final twist of Iain Softley's The Skeleton Key. If you've ever seen those movies, you know pretty much what happens in this film. If you haven't I fear this review may spoil three movies.

Jessabelle “Jessie” Laurent (Sarah Snook) is moving into her fiance's (Brian Hallisay) house, when they're both in a car accident, killing her fiance, causing Jessie to have a miscarriage, and leaving her wheelchair-bound. Jessie's only option is to move in with her father (David Andrews) in Louisiana, who she barely knows. Jessie's mother died when she was a baby, and she was raised primarily by her aunt.

Once in her father's home Jessie discovers a box of tapes that her mother made while pregnant, reading tarot. The tapes were supposed to be given to her on her 18^th birthday if anything happened to her mother, but her father had failed to do so. He claims that her mother was suffering from brain cancer while making them, and watching them will only upset Jessie.

The readings are notably inaccurate. Her mother incorrectly predicted that Jessie would not leave their town, was associated with water in some way, and was a home-body. However, she also predicts that there's a female presence in the house that wants Jessie out, and this prediction seems to come true, as a mysterious ghost (Amber Stevens) begins to attack her.

Jessie's father attempts to destroy the tapes, but is attacked and burned to death by the spirit himself. This leaves Jessie to investigate the spirit with her High School friend Preston (Mark Webber). They eventually discover an infant's grave, marked with Jessie's birthday, and her full name, Jessabelle. The police examine the skeleton, and determine that the baby was born alive, but murdered. They also encounter members of a local Voodou-practicing church, all of whom have a strange hatred for Jessie, and by extension anyone associated with her.

The final tape, hidden in the wall, reveals the truth: Before marrying Jessie's father, her mother slept with the black man who taught her to read cards (Vaughn Wilson). When the baby, Jessabelle, was born black, her father murdered her, and adopted Jessie to cover the crime. Her mother then killed herself as part of a ritual that would make it possible for Jessabelle to possess Jessie.

This plot twist has some fairly obvious holes in it. We're shown the baby being born in a hospital, meaning there should be numerous doctors and nurses who knew that Jessabelle was black. It's a small town, she never ran into any of them again? No friends came to congratulate them at the hospital? I'd also be curious to know how her father was able to just get his hands on a white baby so quickly. There's absolutely no attempt to explain where Jessie came from.

As I said at the beginning, the movie has an influence from The Changeling, but that movie did it better. There was actual effort made to explain how the father was able to switch out the babies. Furthermore, The Changeling portrayed the spirit as a confused child. When we're shown Jessabelle, she's portrayed as an adult, who should be well-aware that Jessie had nothing to do with her murder. If she's going to take over Jessie's life, she has to have the faculties of an adult. That removes a lot of the ambiguity of the situation, leaving us with just a murderous spirit.

Beyond that, a lot of the set-up doesn't seem to go anywhere. Preston is married, but his wife (Larisa Oleynik) appears in a single scene. It's strongly implied that Jessabelle intends to seduce him in the body of Jessie, and the issue of his marriage seems like a non-factor. Jessie's fiance is rarely mentioned after her death, as is her pregnancy.

Jessie's limited mobility only comes up in one or two scenes as well, because most scenes either happen around the house, or happen with Preston present. Her father takes away her wheelchair at one point, and throws it in the bayou, but then either fishes it out or gets her a new one by the next morning. The final sequence has her wheelchair being rolled into the bayou with her in it, but she was possessed by a spirit, so the wheelchair seems fairly unimportant to that. Is it really different from just jumping?

The movie certainly isn't horrible, but it isn't great either. It felt like it either had too many re-writes, or not enough. It needed to either have the extra plot-threads expanded, or cut entirely. Still, I've seen much worse.