Let's Scare Jessica to Death

1971 ***1/2

I'm a staycation kind of guy, because sometimes there's nothing better than a big hunk of free time in your own house with your own stuff. Plus, if I understand the world correctly, every time you go somewhere quiet and secluded in order to relax, it turns into a nightmarish fight for your very survival.

Jessica, her husband Duncan and their close friend Woody move to a small town in an isolated part of Connecticut, a town apparently populated by five unfriendly old men who live on the porch of the general store. Jessica has just been released from a mental institution for unspecified reasons, but it's clear from the outset that it wasn't a minor problem.

The three friends arrive at the Victorian farmhouse they've purchased and are surprised to discover Emily, a redheaded hippie chick who's been crashing there. Jessica spots her first, right after the lights are turned on, then Duncan looks too. He immediately turns to Jessica and says "It's okay, I see her too." A moment later, before they're even sure who the intruder is, she turns to Woody with a grin, quietly giddy that she didn't hallucinate just now.

It might seem like hamfisted writing, and maybe it is, but you'd never notice thanks to Jessica. Actress Zohra Lampert plays the character as desperately, genuinely raw in even the smallest moments, and it's a totally convincing. Everything about her is so excrutiatingly brittle, as if she might fly into pieces any second, even when she's in a good mood.

As things progress and they ask Emily to stay, we start to hear a needling voice in Jessica's head, delivered in a disquietingly close whisper. The situation is kept intentionally vague: Is this normal inner dialogue, or is her madness returning? Is Emily hot for Duncan, or a long-dead member of the family who once lived in the house, or neither? (If it's the second one, then props for the most brilliant "haunting" ever. "Oh, you guys live here? Dude, sorry! I'll go... oh really? Cool, thanks!... got any beer?")



Let's Scare Jessica to Death is a reliable, slow-burning thriller that is worthwhile for Jessica's portrayal alone. It's not particularly gory, but it has a special unsettling quality, almost as if it were beamed in from a nearby alternate reality (although sometimes 1971 is enough).

The question of what may have happened only in Jessica's mind is kept open-ended, but personally I like the idea that it all really happened. I will always lean that way. What I keep mulling over is: What happens next? Who will believe her?

Props to DCD for the recommendation.