JETHICA is a film about liminality. It explores the murky spaces between adolescence and adulthood, day and night, life and death. One thing it is clear on, however, is the line between love and obsession, as it examines the effect of stalking on its (kinda sorta) title character. With deadpan humor, a striking visual style, and an intriguing exploration of the fluidity of boundaries we often see as far more fixed than they really are, JETHICA is an offbeat standout from this year’s SXSW film festival.
We meet Elena (Callie Hernandez) as she’s having sex with an unseen man in the back of a car. When he wonders why they never go to her place, she replies simply that she doesn’t know him well enough to let him know where she lives. As he tries to get to know her better, she begins telling him a wild story about the time she killed someone in Arizona. In flashback, we see Elena going about her daily life in her grandmother’s trailer. One day, she runs into her childhood friend Jessica (Ashley Denise Robinson), who agrees to have coffee with her and then starts telling her about her stalker. When they do some sightseeing, Jessica thinks she sees her stalker, Kevin (Will Madden, who speaks with a slight lisp in the film, thus the name “Jethica”), and the women go back to Elena’s trailer. Kevin follows them there, though, and Elena and Jessica realize that they will have to take extraordinary measures to get rid of Kevin for good.
Most of JETHICA takes place at sunrise or sunset. Pete Ohs’ cinematography is breathtaking, with its golden-hour images of Arizona landscapes and intriguingly composed shots. One memorable scene shows an EVIL DEAD-style run through a field as the camera approaches Elena’s trailer, with the blues, pinks, oranges, and yellows of the sunset glowing in the sky above it. Another scene shows Kevin, muttering to himself obsessively as he walks in and out of some agricultural equipment. It’s a shot that could easily be pedestrian in the wrong hands but Ohs makes wonderful use of the setting available to him and turns it into a gorgeous image that blurs the lines between the mundane and the supernatural.
Ohs also directed, co-wrote, and edited the film, and that cohesive vision is evident throughout. JETHICA is striking in its visuals and its tone, achieving an oddly humorous tale of a disturbing stalker and the two women he terrorizes. The cast also co-wrote the film: Hernandez, Madden, Robinson, and Andy Faulkner (who plays Benny, a hitchhiking friend of Elena’s) all have writing credits, suggesting a fluid, improvisatory approach to the script. That approach works, as all the conversations feel organic and lived-in. You can feel the history between Elena and Jessica, along with the awkwardness of reuniting with a childhood friend as adults. Madden’s monologues in particular reach a frenzied weirdness; his deranged obsession with Jessica is a frightening but simultaneously funny stream-of-consciousness. Stalking isn’t funny, but JETHICA manages to be; it never shows anything but respect to Jessica and what she suffers at Kevin’s hands, and although the ending may seem a little too neat, the film ultimately reinforces the insidious, dangerous nature of the crime.
The film makes frequent use of voiceover, once more blurring the lines of time and reality. Close-ups of inanimate objects and wide shots of remote landscapes as we hear Jessica and Elena talking create an eerie, dissociative mood. John Bowers’ score adds to the dreamy tension, with its mix of Tangerine Dream and Angelo Badalamenti; foreboding, thrumming tones keep the viewer on edge as we take in JETHICA’s unusual angles and disembodied conversations.
JETHICA is a delightfully strange story about liminal states. It blurs the line between the living and the dead and makes the viewer question what they think about time, memory, and reality. Despite all its wonderful ambiguity and humor, it never loses sight of how serious stalking is, and it treats its characters with care and respect. An odd film full of dry humor, gorgeous compositions, and intriguing ideas about the true nature of life, JETHICA is a captivating golden-hour ghost story.
Tags: Andy Faulkner, Angelo Badalamenti, Ashley Denise Robinson, Callie Hernandez, Evil Dead, Film Festivals, Ghost Story, Ghosts, Jethica, John Bowers, night of the living dead, Pete Ohs, SXSW, SXSW 2022, Tangerine Dream, Will Madden
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