Over the past decade, filmmakers have been looking for new ways to bend and defy genres by taking two conflicting genres and marrying them together for a new movie-going experience. Jethica sits at the intersection of a dark comedy and a supernatural thriller, creatively blending the genres together to create a refreshingly unique approach to stalker ghosts.
The film opens with Elena (Callie Hernandez) revealing to a backseat hook up that she killed a man. It’s presented and met with such effortless disinterest that the tone of the film is set into stone within the first five minutes. From there, audiences are transported back to how it all began, with Elena unexpectedly reuniting with her old high school friend Jessica (Ashley Denise Robinson) in the middle of nowhere New Mexico.
Things are a little off-kilter right from the start. Elena’s hitchhiker friend Benny (Andy Faulkner) is lurching around like an off-season Walker from The Walking Dead, Jessica seems to be haunted by something in her past, and the revelation that she was being stalked by some guy named Kevin (Will Madden) comes with an oddly weak reaction. Things feel uniquely sedate up until the ghostly twist is delivered in the second act.
When it becomes apparent that Jessica’s stalker Kevin just won’t quit haunting her, the duo has to look for answers from the beyond and in the process, Elena has to face her own personal ghosts.
Ghostly stalkers are not an entirely new phenomenon, but Jethica’s script approaches the situation with fast and loose lore and deadpan humor. Hernandez and Robinson play well off of each other, delivering a believable shared history, while forging ahead together into a strange unknown. Their kinship is mirrored in the unlikely friendship that is born out of the solemn wanderer Benny and the unhinged rambling of Kevin.
Clocking in at just over one hour, Peter Ohs’ third feature touches on difficult themes like stalking, murder, depression, and suicide, and packages it into an off-beat tale. Jethica can meander quite a bit, much like Benny and Kevin’s endless walk, but the slow burn delivers a truly ghoulish delight. There is a certain unexpected sorrow infused into the plot which will force its audience to look inward and unpack their own ghosts and consider what will be left behind when they’re gone.
Films will often claim that their location is as much of a character as their cast, but the endless, desolate landscape of New Mexico truly feels like its own living, breathing entity in Jethica. Without it, the film wouldn’t be able to drive home this sort of empty, nothingness that comes with death.
Jethica delivers on its promise of feeling like a grown-up version of an Are You Afraid of the Dark? episode. It’s concise and exacting in the delivery of its plot, though sometimes to its detriment. While the film doles out just enough backstory to like and sympathize with its characters, it never goes deep enough to make the pay-off feel fully earned. Jethica feels like the middle act of a much more compelling film and is a rare example of a film that could have done with a smidge more exposition. If this were a proof-of-concept I would love to see a much deeper, broader look at this story.
Grade: B+
Jethica had its world premiere at SXSW this week.