- Directed by John D. Hancock
- Written by John D. Hancock, Lee Kalcheim, Sheridan Le Fanu
- Stars Zohra Lampert, Barton Heyman, Kevin O’Connor
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
- Trailer:
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
It’s a slow build that really gets interesting as it goes along. Something seems to be out to get Jessica. Or is it? It’s a movie that lets the audience kind of come to their own conclusion.
Synopsis
We start with a man loading a coffin into a Hearse. Credits roll.
Woody, Duncan, and Jessica get out of the Hearse. “For the first time in months, I’m free. Forget the doctors,” Jessica narrates. Duncan says the farm will be good for her after what she’s been through. She does a rubbing of a headstone and sees a strange woman who isn’t there after she looks away. “Don’t tell them, act normal,” she tells herself.
They take a ferry across a cove. The locals call them “damned hippies” for driving around in a Hearse. Finally, they arrive at a big old house on a farm. “Jessica why have you come here?” says the voice in the fog. There’s someone in the house, and all three of them go upstairs looking for the intruder. It’s a girl named Emily who thought the place was abandoned. Jesscia invites her to stay and spend the night, then they’ll drive her to town in the morning.
Emily pulls out her lute and starts to play during dinner. It’s a hippie thing. Duncan accompanies her on his cello. The voices in Jessica’s head continue, and we soon get the impression that Jessica’s not completely sane. Actually, she was just released from an institution, and this trip to the country is to help her recover.
Emily suggests they have a seance. Jessica hears more voices and gets upset. Is it ghosts? No one else hears anything, just Jessica. Later, Duncan and Jessica have sex while Woody and Emily get together downstairs.
The next day, they all go to wash in the lake (no running water in the farmhouse?). Jessica might be a little jealous of Emily, who has decided to stay. Jessica swims out into the lake and sees someone down under the water who calls to her. She freaks out. Later, Jessica worries that Duncan thinks she’s losing her mind again.
They spend the day searching the farm for things they might want to sell. Jessica and Duncan decide to invite Emily to stay with them for as long as she likes, which pleases both Woody and Emily immensely. Jessica buys some eggs while Duncan deals with an old man who hates hippies. This town isn’t very friendly to young people or strangers. Jessica notices that all the old men have some sort of bandage on.
They drive on and meet Sam, who owns an antique store. When Sam finds out they bought the old Bishop place, he tells them some of the stories about the people who died there. He does still offer them money for some of the antiques and an old photo. Abigail Bishop drowned there in the 1800s, and people say her ghost still roams the hills there; some even say she’s a vampire. They never found her body.
Jessica sees a strange blonde woman in the cemetery soon after. Jessica chases her to the lake, where she finds Sam the antique dealer’s bloody body. When she brings Duncan back, there’s no sign of anything. She swears she didn’t imagine it this time. They catch up to the girl, who is real, but she can’t speak.
Dinner that night is awkward, as Jessica argues with herself inside her own mind. She goes upstairs and checks on her pet mole. Duncan suggests that maybe they could go back to New York for a while so she can see her doctor. Yes, he does think she’s having mental issues. They argue and he goes downstairs. Later, the mute girl sneaks in and seduces Duncan.
The next morning, Jessica finds her pet mole mutilated. Jessica knows she didn’t do it; she’s adamant that she’s not crazy, but it sure looks like she is! Jessica sees the painting they sold hanging up in their attic and hears a voice saying, “I’m still alive.” The picture of Abigail looks very much like Emily.
Emily wants to go swimming again, but Jessica’s a little afraid after what happened last time. Emily pushes Jessica in, and Jessica isn’t happy. Jessica sees the body under the water again, and it says, “come this way. Follow me…” A hand reaches up and grabs her. She gets away, but the dead woman climbs up out of the water and follows her. The dead woman tries to bite her in the neck, but Jessica breaks free and runs back to the house.
The voices start telling her, “You want to die. I won’t go away; you’ll never get rid of me.” She runs to the road and heads to town. Once again, she sees that all the men have weird scars, so she runs back into the woods until she finds Duncn.
Woody comes inside and asks Emily where Jessica is, and Emily is weird about it. He thinks she’s been up to no good, but she starts acting slutty, and he falls for it.
Duncan and Jessica return home and find there is no power, so they light a lamp. They start making out, and then she notices that Duncan has one of those scars as well. She watches the ghost approach both with a knife.
Jessica wakes up and finds all the townspeople in her bedroom, wandering like zombies. She runs outside and looks for Woody’s tractor but finds Woody dead. She continues running through the woods to the ferry, but the ferryman, who has a scar, says, “The ferry isn’t running for you.”
Jessica then steals a rowboat and tries to head to the mainland on her own. Out in the middle of the lake, she watches as a hand reaches up onto the boat. She hacks the attacker to pieces with a boat hook – it’s actually Duncan. She watches as Emily and the locals walk back into the woods. Jessica’s no longer sure what’s real… For that matter, neither are we.
Commentary
Duncan looks like a balding, middle-aged guy in his late 30s or even 40s, not your stereotypical hippy. I can’t imagine why the locals treated him the way they did. Woody has the stereotypical hippy look, but he didn’t have any interactions with the locals that we saw.
That mole looks suspiciously like a mouse. Did the filmmakers really think people couldn’t tell the difference? Why not just call it a mouse?
It all starts out pretty slow, but the suspense and paranoia build up more and more as it goes on. Is there a ghost? Is Jessica crazy? Is Emily trying to trick her? Or is it all of the ebove?
The title of the film indicates a conspiracy to drive Jessica insane, but other than either Emily, or maybe a real ghost that looks like her, we don’t really get that. I was still expecting right up to the end that Woody, Duncan, and the other “dead” people would sit up and give a sort of “gotcha!” moment, but they don’t. The ending is quite vague. Still, I suspect the trick is on us; we’re supposed to think it’s a conspiracy, but Jessica really is insane. It’s a neat twist on the usual conspiracy film.