Jug Face

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.

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.

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.

Yep, that's about it. After I finished watching the film and I came here to check out the rating, I was not surprised at all that it was a mere 5.2. And deservedly so...

The great writer Charlie Kaufman in his brilliant film 'ADAPTATION' had the experienced filmmaker tell his character that 'Rule #1' in writing was to make sure to give the audience a 'Slam-Bang' ending. Well, this is precisely, in my lowly and wretched opinion, where the filmmakers here fell far short.

The reason why this movie currently only has a '5.2' rating isn't because it wasn't made well. It isn't because it wasn't acted well, because the acting was superb. It wasn't because technically it wasn't down well, because the writing, direction, pacing, and above all 'Mood' was excellent. It it certainly wasn't because the story was poor; the idea was frigg'n BRILLIANT!

The reason, as clearly stated in my title above is because of the ending. And, without giving too much away, I do not mind 'Dark' endings. I do not mind endings that might give you a shock. BUT... in my lowly and wretched opinion, one thing I feel that a director should never, NEVER do, is put the audience through such a grueling and fascinating and creative journey and then just end it with a completely pointless, and I mean POINTLESS letdown.

Inexcusable...

And, thus, the deserved 5.2 rating. IF, and I really mean this, IF the filmmakers had just given the bloody ending a BIT more thought so that the audience either felt rewarded for going through all that they had, or given it some kind of nice twist, or at least given us some irony, just bloody SOMETHING, ANYTHING instead of the paltry nothing, meaningless ending that in my opinion did absolutely NOTHING for the audience, I feel quite honestly that it would have been a truly great film. But, sadly, It simply didn't leave us with a feeling of satisfaction. It didn't leave us with a sense of Mystery. It didn't even leave us with a true sense of Horror. The audience is left sitting there going, 'Is that it...?'

It just left us with a mindlessly STUPID non-ending that did nothing for us in any way at all...