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Storyline
Jessabelle "Jessie" Laurent is pregnant and accepts to move to the house of her boyfriend to raise a family of their own. However they have a car accident where her boyfriend and her baby die. Jessie is seriously wounded and trapped to a wheelchair, and the direction of the hospital asks her to contact her estranged father to help her. Leon Laurent brings his daughter to his house in Louisiana and lodges her in her mother's room. Jessie snoops around the room and finds a videotape where her mother Kate Laurent is pregnant and reads tarot cards to her. She tells that Jessie would never left Louisiana; she is attracted by water; and another woman wants her out of the house. However Leon arrives and destroys the tape. On the next morning, Jessie watches another videotape when her father is out of the house, and her mother talks about the man that had taught her to read cards, Moses. Jessie is haunted by the ghost of a woman and her father discovers the two other videotapes she has hidden... Written by
Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
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Did You Know?
Trivia
Jacob Sullivan did uncredited rewrites.
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Goofs
When Preston carries Jessie out to his truck in the rain (with her wrapped in the green army blanket), the distance the driver's door is open varies between shots.
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Quotes
Title Card:
We will cast a shadow over you that cannot be distinguished from Fate. -"Legends of Haiti"
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Crazy Credits
We will cast a shadow over you that can't be distinguished from Fate. - "Legends of Haiti"
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Soundtracks
Instead
Written by Thomas Cusimano and Emily Alfstad
Performed by The Walcotts
Courtesy of The Walcotts
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Jessabelle is a movie that, unfortunately, relies too much on it's jump/scare moments & atmosphere to entertain rather than the plot or story. Don't get me wrong...the plot of the movie isn't that bad and the story is filmed out decently enough. It's just that it has a wee bit of a tendency to go a bit slow in places and at 90 minutes (which is average for a film these days) it could have been beefed out a bit better I think to make it not feel AS slow.
Another aspect of the story is that, while it's not overly complicated or confusing, you do need to pay attention to what is happening because if you don't then the ending will make no sense whatsoever. In saying that however, even when paying attention, one part of the story still didn't make sense, but I won't say anything for very obvious reasons.
Some of the scare scenes in the movie were actually quite good (especially considering that this film is only a PG-13) even if they were the good old fashioned jump/scare's. Sometimes the old tried and tested methods are the best and they were done well for this film. The atmosphere generated through the film is very decent as well, especially when it is working alongside the more scarier parts of the story. I know it's a given that atmosphere usually works well with creepy moments, but here it is nicely done throughout the movie.
The cast do a pretty solid job too and the film is well acted. I mean there are no stand out performances that are Oscar worthy (no offense to the cast), but they all do a fine job with the script that they are working with.
Given all of that, it does go a bit slow in places like I say, and I think that's really the only thing stopping me from giving it a slightly higher rating than what I have.
Overall, Jessabelle is a decent, well acted out supernatural horror with some nice creepy moments that is just a bit slow. It's nowhere near to being the best out there but at the same time I've seen much worse.