The thrill of watching Jessabelle is enhanced several times by the realisation that you are in an empty movie hall. I was, therefore, primed to watch the film in optimal settings — there was no one around to hear me scream. And yet, over the next 90 minutes, as I followed the tortured narrative of the eponymous Jessabelle in her haunted family home in Louisiana, nothing that ever transpired on screen induced anything close to a scream — or even anything more than tepid excitement. This is a shame because beyond the artificial plot contrivances that are evidently required to set up a story such as this, the narrative possibilities offer plenty of scope for the director to put the fear of the paranormal in his captive audience.
Recovering from an accident that has confined her to a wheelchair, Jessabelle (played by an earnest Sarah Snook) is compelled to return to her lakeside family home in small-town Louisiana, to live with the gruff father she never knew. Pretty soon, an ancestral ghost is toying with her. Her mum, who died of cancer, has left oh-so-1980s VHS tapes for Jessabelle to watch on her 18th birthday. But these aren’t exactly dripping with syrupy-sweet sentiments. Reading tarot cards on the tapes, the mother prophesies a horrible death — and points to the presence of a spirit in the house, which doesn’t like Jessabelle.
It is hard to account for Greutert’s uninspired treatment of this horror film, given that he’s established himself with moderate distinction in this genre with Saw III and Saw V . Some of the fault for the slackness in the narrative perhaps lies with writer Robert Ben Garant, for whom a Night at the Museum appears to be rather more familiar terrain than Jessabelle . He spends way too much screen time fleshing out the relationship between Jessabelle and her old flame Preston (Mark Webber), who still pines for her. The only thing that counts in a horror film is: what manner of foul being lurks behind that creaking door?