Jessabelle: Not too spooky for real horror

JESSABELLE
Staring: Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, David Andrews, Joelle Carter, Ana de la Reguera
Rated: 4/10
If it is Hollywood and it is haunted, it has to be an unkempt, marooned mansion in the middle of nowhere, preferably shrouded in an unvisited forest, sitting eerily quiet by the side of a placid lake. And, of course, there has to be a new occupant who gets spooked out by the evil spirit, mostly on a revenge binge.
Jessabelle follows this done-to-death holy grail of Hollywood to the T with just an added thing — the new occupant here is wheel-chair bound and she is here as daddy’s daughter.
The film takes too much time to pick up the heebie-jeebie content and is felled by its predictability even though there is a cause-hunt that the victim of spirits launches with her “friend from school.” Even the end is something you figured out earlier so there is hardly any scream factor in the proceedings.
Sarah Snook as the disabled girl does give in an arresting performance but a keen eye can see she, too, struggles to unfold the fear factor which essentially rests on unpredictability — something that’s missing from the proceedings. About time Hollywood thought up something new to haunt spectators around the globe.

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 14 December, 2014

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