Naty's Spooky Corner

Jug Face

★★★★★

Sunday, July 25, 2021, 11:11 PM

Have you ever stumbled around in nature enough to find a magical mud pit that can cure all your diseases and then promptly decide to worship it? Thankfully, me either. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the small mountain community in “Jug Face”. Raised in this cult-like setting, our protagonist, Ada, is young, adventurous and soon discovers that she has been chosen by forces unknown to become the next sacrifice to her community's sacred mud pit. In an attempt to save her life, Ada must use her quick wits and few allies to escape the forest that she once called home in order to save herself and the life of her baby.

If you’re as morbid intrigued as I was with this tantalizing premise, please read on:

This film is a classic folk horror story with one special twist, instead of the traditional storyline that introduces outsiders to the horrors ingrained in a backwoods community, we instead have the chance to view the horrors unfold towards one of the group’s own, a young girl full of energy and a want for freedom. For example, many films such as “Midsommar” by Ari Aster, “Wrong Turn” by Rob Schmidt, and finally a classic “Children of the Corn” by Fritz Kiersch frame the narrative around ordinary people who just ended up at the wrong place at the wrong time. That subtle change makes this film feel unique and downright terrifying.

To complement this shift in perspective, the writer and director Chad Crawford Kinkle makes sure to emphasize the town’s use of violence and forced submission towards women, specifically Ada. From being forced to “join” or marry a young townsboy at an outrageous young age to having her purity forcibly monitored by her unforgiving mother, it’s clear for more reasons than one just why Ada needs to get the hell out of her small town as quickly as possible. The peak of these horrors is reached after a failed attempt to escape into the neighboring town leaves Ada whipped by the hands of her own father and so physically traumatized that she miscarries her unborn child. As shocking as these images are to the audience, they serve to perpetuate a clear message of how degenerate these actions towards women are and how the dismantling of this social construct should not be taken lightly.

Let me just go ahead and take a quick breather from the heavier topics mentioned before to give a quick shout-out to the writer, Kinkle, for basing his story around something as absurd as a supernatural mud pit monster that thirsts for blood and has a knack for entering people’s minds. Seriously….who the fuck thinks of that? And the fact that each village sacrifice is chosen by whichever face the occasionally possessed potter ends up making into a literal jug? It’s crazy, it’s wacky, it’s everything new and fresh that the horror movie genre so desperately needs. Evenso, this movie was definitely a wild ride, but may not be as easily watched by other viewers for good reason. For myself however, this was hands down one of the best indie horror films that I have seen in a long time.

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