Jug Face

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.

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.

Ada is a young girl who lives with her backwoods hillbilly moonshinin' clan. A close knit community, they all share a rather arcane religion. Every so often, The Potter makes a ceramic jug adorned by a face. Every face that appears on the jug is a member of the clan and any face that appears must be sacrificed for the good of the community. Sacrificed to The Pit, which lies in the woods. Because The Pit wants what it wants and The Pit must be sated as this is how it's always been. If The Pit doesn't get what it wants then whatever dwells within it gets angry. And when The Pit gets angry, the community will be punished.

One day, while exploring The Potter's shed, Ada finds the latest jug face. It's her own...

Will she allow herself to be sacrificed, for the good of the clan? or will she set in motion a plan to spare her own life?

Jug Face is a straightforward but pleasantly offbeat horror that puts an interesting and unusual spin on the hillbilly horror/hicksploitation sub genre, with a nice turn by Larry Fessenden as the clan leader and a surprisingly great turn from Sean Young as the overbearing matriarch.

Executively produced by Lucky Mckee and with FX by Robert Kurtzman, it's a satisfying and solid horror that's well worth checking out overall, for fans looking for something just a little bit different.

7/10, decent little film and recommended.

Ada is a sexually active girl in a religious community that lives in the forest making human sacrifice to their god, The Pit. The Pit possesses a chosen member of the community, making a jug with a face molded into it. The person who's face is on the jug is the person they must sacrifice. The Pit wants what it wants. When Ada finds her face on the new jug, she hides it as she suspects she may be pregnant.

This is a great, original new dramatic horror story with some excellent performances. Lauren Ashley Carter gives us reason to like a girl, who if given a different perspective of, most of us would judge harshly and look down upon as she's pregnant with her brother's child. Both her father and mother, played by Larry Fessenden and Sean Young, are played perfectly. However it's Sean Bridgers as Dawai, the jug-maker, who steals the show with his character.

Jug Face is written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle. As good of a writer he may show promise to be, what holds Jug Face back from being a great film is that it is poorly paced. Enough time isn't spent on building suspense, adding tension, exploring the horror of all that is going on. We wish the film was longer so we could have spent more time getting to know the characters so that we care whether or not they are going to die. Whether this is a lack of talent or experience as a director is uncertain, what is certain is that the performances and the story make up for this. It's through Sean Bridgers and Lauren Ashley Carter that we come to care for their characters. Sean Young plays one of the most frightening mothers put to screen since Carrie and is more dreadful than The Pit.

Overall, Jug Face will be a twisted, original treat for fans of indie horror.

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.