'Jessabelle': Disappointing, derivative mash-up is scary bad

An experienced filmmaker who began his career as an editor, Jessabelle director Kevin Greutert (Saw 3D: The Final Chapter, Saw VI) is intimately familiar with the pantheon of directors whose works have shaped the horror genre.

So it's puzzling to see that knowledge wasted on Jessabelle, an ineffective, derivative, and awkwardly executed mash-up of ghost flicks and voodoo movies.

Set in Louisiana swampland, the story opens as a triumphant homecoming. Jessabelle, or Jessie as she's known (Sarah Snook), is returning to her hometown, bringing with her a great education and a fiance.

Before five minutes are up, a car crash kills Jessie's man and smashes up her legs and back. Confined to a wheelchair, our heroine has no choice but to move in with her dad in her childhood home, a large, isolated, ramshackle affair that's just asking - man, it's begging - to be haunted.

And so it is, both by the living and the dead.

Every night, Jessie catches glimpses of a creepy, toothy, long-haired Japanese Horror-styled apparition at her bedside. She hears the specter call out with plaintive urgency. Jessie is afraid, and curious.

Meanwhile, she's pestered and disturbed by her father, a veritable zombie hollowed out by grief and guilt since his wife, Jessie's mom, died more than 20 years ago.

Jessie, who knows little about her family's past, discovers a cache of video letters addressed to her that her mother recorded while pregnant. Jessie becomes obsessed with the tapes and suspicious about her dad's motives for keeping them secret.

Is the being who haunts Jessie actually her mom? Was she murdered by Jessie's dad? And why do so many of the woman's friends practice voodoo?

Jessie's car accident must have done something to her brain, because the more she investigates - with the help of her dishy high school flame, Preston (Mark Webber) - the more confused she gets.

And the more annoying the film becomes. The denouement is so predictable, one wonders why the filmmaker dressed it up as a surprise twist.

Directed by Kevin Greutert. With Sarah Snook, Mark Webber, Joelle Carter, David Andrews. Distributed by Lionsgate Pictures.

Running time: 1 hour, 40 mins.

Parent's guide: PG-13 (violence, some gore, sequences of terror).

Playing at: AMC Loews Cherry Hill 24.

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