[REVIEW] Jethica takes accountability beyond the grave

When a film begins with a woman’s confession to murder and slowly creeps into a flashback, generic convention indicates that the ensuing narrative will traverse all kinds of morally gray territory. This is a set-up that is perpetually exploitable in genre fiction regardless of whether the filmmaker’s aesthetic swings hard or not. Pete Ohs’ Jethica begins with a moody sex scene. The score is sparse but ominous, much like the rest of the film. And the audience is only treated to glimpses of human features before the camera zeroes in on Elena (Callie Hernandez) as she tells a post-coital story about the man she killed and where it happened. She takes calculated drags from her cigarette, further acclimating the viewer to the film’s noir leanings. The scene is tense, as we don’t ever see her lover and have every reason to believe he might be next. He has nothing to fear. From here on in, the film reveals itself to be something else entirely.

Jethica centers the drama of its titular character, Jessica (Ashley Denise Robinson), a woman on the run from her stalker, Kevin (Will Madden). Jessica reconnects with Elena in New Mexico, where she accepts an invitation to stay on property owned by Elena’s grandmother. What begins as a brief respite from a traumatic experience suddenly reverts back to a state of panic. Kevin has caught up with Jessica. The catch is: he’s dead and walks the grounds as a restless spirit. Following the discovery of a spell that binds souls to their location, Jessica and Elena scramble to rid themselves of Kevin for good.

While maintaining the structure and atmosphere of a ghost story, Kevin’s haunting is approached more so like a negotiation than a nightmare. This results in moments that revel in deadpan humor and harsh truths about abusive behavior in the same breath. Ohs gives his actors room to react spontaneously in character, as evidenced by each of the cast sharing screenplay credit. The film’s style is reminiscent of Carnival of Souls by way of Jim Jarmusch. And in its taut 70 minutes, Jethica elucidates the rules for killing ghosts (including ghost on ghost combat), examines the nature of guilt and suggests that friendship is the one true savior from purgatory. If there wasn’t already such a tedious storm of discourse from every direction regarding what does and does not constitute genre, including the vacuous “elevated horror” label, I’d venture to call this a horror comedy. Classifications be damned, I’m happy this film exists as is.

There has been a lot of noise about recent horror films that explore trauma, but it often begs the question: when has the horror genre ever not been that way? Jethica does not oppose or refute any of this but it does go farther than many of its contemporaries by simply treating its characters like people instead of vessels for themes. Its humor and heartbreak are well-balanced, exemplified by the title alone. Kevin has a lisp and, so, “Jethica” is how he pronounces the main character’s name. His spirit also screams it at the top of his lungs while launching into several diatribes about how he deserves Jessica’s love because of his obsession with her. Madden is overwhelming as Kevin and Robinson delivers a quietly distressed performance as a woman who is burdened by her own transgressions. The script never makes the boneheaded move of presenting “both sides” of an abusive dynamic in order to vindicate the abuser but, without giving away plot details, suffice to say that Jessica is fully justified in the action that leads her to New Mexico.

Another stand out performance is Andy Faulkner’s Benny, a character whose detached persona becomes a catalyst for the film’s ending. And Hernandez has enough magnetism and otherworldliness to make herself integral to how the story is told. Jethica is not a bombastic statement on the harm done by men who feel entitled to women. As isolation and listlessness take hold of the characters in the film, catharsis is more and more defined by finding purpose after accountability. Ohs’ artistic concerns favor the esoteric but his patience, and a sublime photographic perspective that resembles Daniel Pearl’s work on The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, guide the viewer seamlessly through the film’s most challenging revelations.