Jug Face

I have just finished watching JUG FACE for the first time and I must admit that this is not at all how I expected to feel. The title alone does nothing to promote high expectations. Neither does the few clips that have been showing on the previews from other dvds. This is by all accounts a low budget affair but it still has ...something. There's not a lot of astounding visual effects to distract you or sugarcoat the story but the one thing this film has which is easy to spot is authenticity. It is not the shadowy beings that roam the woods that scare you. It's not the unknown entity that dwells in the pit. Those things are really just there to provide a focus for the real horrors in this movie which are the people that live there. The unshakable faith that the followers have in their myths and the fervor that is palpable in their rhetoric seems to dance just behind their eyes. The conviction that empowers them to commit unspeakable acts. These are the things that stand out about JUG Face. It's an absolutely enthralling depiction of single mindedness and ignorant worship. The characters here are convincing if not always polished. You really feel that they don't believe they have any other choices than the ones which they are compelled to make. They don't question their lives they simply live them out until the pit chooses them. However, once she is chosen, Ada must make a choice of her own...With a larger budget this could have been a masterpiece of modern horror. As is, this is recommended for fans of true dread and moodily atmospheric thrillers. 7 out of 10.

Solid acting, a quite original concept, and a well woven tapestry of a... shall we say, alternative culture, make this into quite a strong movie. I found myself invested in the main character enough to care about the outcome, and intrigued enough in the "elder power" around which the community revolves to want to know more about it. I will say it is not a conventional horror movie, so those who hope to get jump scares and loads of blood are better off looking elsewhere, but if you want a thoughtful little film that still has an element of supernatural, this might be a good one for you. Definitely worth watching, and all the better considering what an expanse of recent garbage this little gem shines out on.

Addendum: I saw some criticisms of this movie and they mostly seemed to center around the idea that it left too many questions unanswered, that it didn't have enough of a story, or that it didn't wrap up to a particular viewers satisfaction. I could not disagree more. The premise is that there is an entity whose older than man whose thinking is unfathomable. To answer the nature of such a creature in your narrative would destroy that property of it... wouldn't it? Personally, I like the unfathomable aspect of it. I like wondering about it but never being given an answer. As to the ending and the lack of a story, without giving anything away, well, a group such as this would have developed a kind of relationship with the entity which would have become very entrenched over time. This tale is a slice of time... not a closed end, and I think the ending we are presented with is the perfect one for the, shall we say, nature of the beast. It is precisely these kinds of things that make the story a bit more innovative and not just another Hollywood style tale designed to satisfy the person who prefers things to be more predigested.

The emperor has no clothes.

It is next to impossible to have a scary movie with nothing scary.

The people who believe that 'less is more' are fooling themselves. Crap like Blair Witch and Paranormal Activity try to substitute style for substance under the guise that people will fill in the omissions of the movie with their own imagination. Well that is BS.

The lead actress is excellent. All of the performances were exemplary. BUT there is no real monster, almost no back story and almost no resolution.

I don't want to give anything away but this movie didn't resolve itself so much as dissolve into credits.

OK, it's one thing to criticize so I will make up a scarier ending.

Something freaking scary and mean comes out of the pit and eviscerates the victims in front of the whole clan. The chick runs away with the potter and while in the big city, the monster rips up the potter in front of hundreds of people. The girl becomes resigned and goes back to goober holler and kills almost everyone in the clan to get out of being the sacrifice. The END. THERE. THAT is a better ending.

A weird thing here. At first dark, textured about hillbilly life, promising some novelty. The handpainted credits bespeak of more personal work, that this comes to us from people who wanted to be creative and not some Hollywood office.

A girl in a repressive backwoods village becomes pregnant just as her parents have arranged marriage and then a mysterious force in the woods (centered in a pit that the people venerate) that seemingly can divine these things, demands blood sacrifice in return for healing and grants visions.

All the tension and strangeness in us being called to parse these wrathful metaphysics through the eyes of people that genuinely believe in them and allow them to dictate life while independent of them having to juggle the possibility that it's all a backwards hallucination, possibly invented: that the imbecile potter merely sculpts faces from a stupor or thin air but does that make the hold of evil less real?

It's clear that they only had a small sketch of the idea as they set to work, interesting at first but goes nowhere, never deeper than something in the earth has to be appeased and the madness of being unable to fathom order; it's still more textured than all the Texas Chainsaw clones, more unusual, but it just smears around with the mythology it creates. A complete loss by the end. Sad.

Jug Face (2013)

*** (out of 4)

The "redneck-horror" genre has pretty much delivered either really bad movies or interesting and original takes on the format. JUG FACE is certainly unlike any other movie I can recall and on that level alone it's worth watching. Set in the backwoods, a community lives by a religion that includes sacrificing anyone who a local potter (Sean Bridgers) sees as a "Jug Face." If this potter sees someone they are taken to a pit in the woods where they are killed and their blood drained into it. Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) finds out that she's pregnant with her brother's baby and soon she feels that she might be the one ready for the pit. If the plot makes you think you're getting some sort of weird exploitation movie then you're wrong. Writer-director Chad Crawford Kinkle actually delivers a very serious and straight-forward horror film that manages to be highly entertaining and creepy. In a lot of ways the film reminded me of THE WICKER MAN as both deal with a backwards community that offer up people for what they believe are good reasons. I'm not sure if the director was aware of that film or not but the two actually have quite a bit in common and I'm not saying that in a bad way. JUG FACE really does offer up an interesting story that keeps you glued to the screen because you never know how it's going to play out or what twist might follow. The director does a fantastic job at making you believe that you're actually in the woods with these rather sick people who are living by codes that most would find pathetic. The film also offers up some rather gory moments that never call attention to themselves in a sense of wanting to shock the viewer. Instead the scenes just come off as realistic. Another major plus is that we're given some excellent performances with Carter really delivering. This is the second picture I've seen her in and she's certainly a talent to watch out for. She brings such a warm feeling to this character to where you can care for her and want to see her survive this ordeal. Bridgers is also extremely good in his role as is Sean Young (yes, that Sean Young) who plays the girl's twisted mother. People who are tired of the same old type of horror films will certainly want to check this one out. It's not flawless but it's certainly entertaining and creepy.