Jessica Forever

Don't be fooled by the cover, which boasts a more impressive color palette than this entire "movie." Beyond an interesting open, things quickly self-immolate after some drones show up.

People walk, people talk, people go to the mall, people do some drugs, people break and make some chandeliers, and a girl gets eaten out. Honestly, that is all that happens post-drones.

Take a hint from this and keep some gasoline ready for self-immolation, you'll likely be needing it if you give this a shot. At the very least, keep that 15 second FF button handy.

I'm not quite sure why everyone is marking this movie so low. It's a fascinating look at masculinity for young men growing up in a violent, shoot-em-up world that is near-reality. The scene where they dance together is full of young boy angst, bubbling under the skin. Sure, it's slow-paced and grows, but the idea that a female presence can calm their anger in a way they have never known is interesting and explored well. I'm not keen on the ending, which seems to then go against what Jessica has in mind all along, but the idea that an unsaid terrible world event lurks in their past and is never named is very clever and maybe just a little too low key for the masses to grasp, but why are there drones, why is nobody about, why are huge houses empty? This is never addressed, which is part of the unique feel to the film. More movies like this are needed. It's not just beautiful, but the fact it is is only a tribute to the filmmakers.

Yes this is a very beautiful movie. Cinematography is superb, artistic design - first class. In fact, all the technical aspects of film making are at their peak. So What!!?? We also get here a confused Christian fable with Jessica a mysterious woman and her twelve orphans. Twelve persecuted, tormented orphans all of whom get to participate in Pieta like scenes over and over again. And that's not all we get, we get loads of pretentious mysticism the idiotic notion that one can equate death with redemption and therefore with love. In other words we get a thematic mumbo jumbo that the director and script writer confused with a story.

It's beautiful, but it's also hollow and pompous and a waste of some obvious talents that did participate in its making.

It's a quite surreal movie that doesn't explain itself to you, flowing along with aesthetics over story, and not really "storying" like a normal movie at all. If you're expecting a classic Hollywood-Action-Blockbuster that shows you every last detail making sure that you never need to suspend your disbelief under any circumstance, of course this is not for you. But it's imaginative and refreshing, and if you keep an open mind, you can have an interesting time with it.

To start off, I'm not sure exactly why Shudder acquired rights to this film. It's not horror, nor is it something that they'd usually push on their platform, especially as a "Shudder Original". At any rate, this movie is very... French. Super experimental, super weird, and super unrewarding.

The whole premise is supposed to be a dystopian world (which is not at all dystopian, but more like a late 2010s world where absolutely nothing has changed) where these misfit orphans rule the world and "take back what is rightfully theirs" (which never happens at all outside of dialogue). This is an intriguing enough story, and there are so many scenes in this movie that should have enriched it, but with all of the scenes and all of the characters, so little happens. In fact, you could argue that nothing at all happens.

And what does happen include some very weird things including but not limited to: letters on a birthday cake floating around, a dead sister reanimating to play a video game with her brother, a gun floating around a bedroom and speaking through another character, blood randomly covering someone, and someone lighting themselves on fire. And the list goes on.

Now, the writing isn't in itself terrible, but it's just a plot that is severely underutilized and does nothing in the way of storytelling. So maybe the whole point of the film was to show the inherent beauty of meaninglessness and the struggle of being alone, but I personally think that, A) if that was the point, it was done poorly, and B) stories like that aren't always great or enjoyable.

I do like an experimental film here and there, but this one was too grounded in reality for the absurdity to feel like any more than distraction and wasted potential.