Review: Jug Face (2013)
Directed by: Chad Crawford Kinkle
Starring: Lauren Ashley Carter, Larry Fessenden, Sean Bridgers
Written by: Chad Crawford Kinkle
Music by: Sean Spillane
Country: United States
Available on: DVD (Moderncine)
IMDb
Jug Face is Chad Crawford Kinkle’s debut feature, a teeny, tiny film about some backwoods yokels that worship a pit filled with muddy, bubbling swamp water and, apparently, a creature of some kind. “The pit,” as everyone calls it, protects the community from harm as long as it sacrifices someone whenever the pit calls for it, communicated via a medium that sculpts clay jugs that resemble the person who’s about to get their throat slashed in the name of pit satiation.
At only 81 minutes, Jug Face is a pretty short movie and shorter still on story, but it’s flirting with some fascinating stuff and driven by stellar performances from Lauren Ashley Carter, Larry Fessenden, and Sean Bridgers. Carter is Ada, pregnant from an incestuous relationship with her brother just before being given away in an arranged marriage. The pit calls for her, but she hides the jug before anyone sees it, setting off a chain reaction that rots her community. Kinkle’s screenplay teases you with flashes of cosmic horror, female agency in oppressive societies, the frayed bonds of family, and old-fashioned backwoods creepiness. Carter, Fessenden (as Ada’s father), and Bridgers (as the pit’s medium) put together a trio of sympathetic performances that illustrate the figurative and literal sacrifices these folks have had to make to keep their fragile, fucked-up patch of hillbilly harmony intact.
There’s an intriguing lore percolating here, Lovecraft shit-faced on moonshine, that’s kind of ridiculous on paper but played so straight that you rarely have the opportunity to reflect on its absurdity because of everyone’s absolute desperation in fear of whatever unseen entity lives in that slimy muck water. Kinkle only provides small glimpses into their existential terror, but they’re mostly well-placed and appropriately disconcerting. But what could have been a supremely creepy if understated look at the small-scale destruction of a small-scale community on a miniscule budget is undercut by a couple of very poor decisions.
First, Sean Young is, shall we say, not good. She’s completely out of her league here and she’s carrying some of the heaviest emotional baggage in the cast as Ada’s mom. Her perfunctory melodrama is a giant oof that deflates some of the film’s most cutting moments. Second, the budget clearly didn’t allow for visual effects, but the Kinkle went for it anyway and fumbled. An apparition that appears to Ada is lathered in both half-assed makeup and a silly swirling cartoon mist. Some of the psychedelic distortions intended to show Ada’s fracturing mind are executed with a particular dearth of flair. I guess you’ve gotta live with your casting decisions, but none of the poorly rendered visual effects add anything that creative editing and costuming wouldn’t have accomplished much better.
None of that completely undoes the compelling if disturbing web that Kinkle spins, though. It does make one lament how much better the final product could have been without much effort, but Jug Face is admirably bizarre and assured for an ultra-indie horror film with a wacky concept and its fair share of odious behavior.
Overall rating: 7 out of 10
