Indie Horror Fans Flock to Frustrating ‘Jug Face’

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Average: 5 (1 vote)
HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 2.5/5.0
Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Chad Crawford Kinkle’s Slamdance hit “Jug Face,” opening this Friday, August 9, 2013 at the La Grange Theatre just outside Chicago and now available On Demand, would have made a great episode of “Masters of Horror.” It has the feel of a memorable short story with its memorable use of setting and sketch of a very unique community on the other side of civilization. Yes, there are still close-knit communities in the woods who pray to Gods and demons not recognized on public access TV and Kinkle’s film captures something often mesmerizing about these people who could be relatives of the lunatics of “The Wicker Man”.

With stylistic and cast echoes of producer Lucky McKee’s excellent “The Woman,” “Jug Face” has a lot going for it at first but it’s a film that ultimately frustrates by not knowing its own limitations. The special effects are not just weak but entirely unnecessary as Kinkle creates a better mood without the gore and camera tricks. And one cannot ever shake the feeling that this is a piece that either needed another act or to be turned into a short film, where it really could have been a powerful, effective gut punch of a horror flick. As is, it just misses its mark – something that should intrigue indie horror fans and definitely contains a number of elements that work, but doesn’t come together as a full feature worth recommending.

Jug Face
Jug Face
Photo credit: Moderncine

Ada (Lauren Ashley Carter) lives in backwoods community that not only arranges marriages of their young women for procreation but also sacrifices members of it to “the pit,” a muddy hole in the ground that supposedly keeps them safe from harm, as it did generations ago during a pox outbreak. A mentally challenged member of the community named Dawai (Sean Bridgers), has a vision of who the pit wants as its next sacrifice, and the visage of that person is than sculpted into a jug. Dawai isn’t even fully conscious when he’s sculpting, his hands guided by a higher power.

Whose face is on the latest jug? Ada, of course. The headstrong young girl, who happens to be pregnant by her brother (yes, her brother), refuses to give into the will of the pit. She buries the jug deep in the forest and, believe it or not, the Gods don’t take this too well. Unlike a lot of films about cults, “Jug Face” takes its mythology at face value. Ada steals the jug designed to appease the Gods and, well, the Gods are not appeased. Members of the cult start ending up gruesomely murdered and they begin to scramble to figure out how to appease the powers that be. Larry Fessenden and Sean Young steal scenes as Ada’s parents but the setting and Kinkle’s commitment to his bizarre community are the stars.

Jug Face
Jug Face
Photo credit: Moderncine

Whenever the demons of the forest are about to act, Ada’s eyes go white, the camera goes shaky, and Kinkle alters film stock and washes the screen in color, as if to hide the film’s low budget. The result is a jarring impact to the viewer that produces the opposite result of what I think Kinkle intended. Instead of pulling us deeper into this bizarre story, every over-use of special effects, especially in the design of the “shunned” who comes back from the other side to haunt Ada, pushes the viewer out of the carefully-crafted realism that Kinkle has designed. They feel like elements of a lesser film, one more reliant on jump scares, and I wish Kinkle had employed the same skill he does with the drama in the film with its horror. The scenes of Dawai sculpting or him talking with Ada have more creepy power than any of the gore sequences.

In the end, Kinkle’s greatest skill may be with performance. Carter and Bridgers, both stars of “The Woman,” are great here, and Fessenden is always interesting (Young goes too far over-the-top, playing too much of her abusive matriarch as a B-movie role when the other performers are going straight drama). I found “Jug Face” more interesting as a dramatic sketch of people who you won’t meet at Starbucks than as a horror film. I’d love to see Kinkle tackle something purely dramatic. Leave the horror tricks at home and dive into characters as unique as Ada and Dawai. While the film around them is ultimately too forgettable, they certainly are not.

“Jug Face” stars Lauren Ashley Carter, Sean Bridgers, Sean Young, and Larry Fessenden. It was written and directed by Chad Crawford Kinkle. It is now available On Demand and opens in limited release in the Chicago area on August 9, 2013.

HollywoodChicago.com content director Brian Tallerico

By BRIAN TALLERICO
Content Director
HollywoodChicago.com
brian@hollywoodchicago.com

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