- Directed by Jennifer Reeder
- Written by Jennifer Reeder
- Stars Kiah McKirnan, Alicia Silverstone, Christopher Lowell, Melanie Liburd
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 40 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KZLh-FXjKU
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This was a cool coming-of-age story, with a girl maturing into powers as she matures into a woman. Unfortunately, things get even more complicated for her as young women in town are disappearing, and some oddball and possibly dangerous people surround her. This was pretty uniquely done, and we liked it a lot.
Synopsis
Credits roll as we get clips of newspaper reports on missing girls, flashes of serial killer tools, and girls walking home alone at night. We get a POV shot from inside a serial killer’s mask as he stalks a victim on the street. We open on Evelyn lying on a table, breathing through a mask. The kidnapper has her on some kind of sleeping gas.
Jonny walks down the street, trying all the car doors, but doesn’t find any unlocked. She then breaks into a house. She goes through all the stuff inside and steals some of it. Then she leaves and gives the stuff to her fence, who doesn’t pay enough. He gives her a bloody nose, but the blood she drips on the ground behaves strangely.
She goes home and gives Gene, her father, the money for rent. Gene looks in the mirror, and his face starts bubbling and shifting. Jonny finds him unconscious on the floor not long after. They both get simultaneous nosebleeds. Gene calls Hildie for help. She’s going to be eighteen next week, and they both know what that means. Jonny’s also been asking about her “missing” mother. He doesn’t know what to do.
So Jonny goes to stay with Hildie, and she says Gene isn’t trying anymore. She gets checked out by the school nurse, who notices a heart condition; it’s like she has two or three hearts. The nurse gets a nosebleed at the same time Jonny gets one. She then goes into the school and breaks into many student lockers to steal things.
Back at Hildie’s house, Jonny starts to bleed in the bathroom, and things start getting weird.
The next day, the principal gives them a talk about personal safety and self-defense. After, they have a “code massacre,” a kind of shooter-drill. The principal comes in with a mask and shoots the girls with red paint. “The last time I got gunned down, I got grounded for a week,” says one girl. Jonny offers to hack the principal’s records and clear the girls from their “deaths.”
Hildie calls Jonny stupid and selfish and insists that she eat one of the items she stole. She eats a lipstick.
Jonny talks to the girls at school about girls who have gone missing. All the girls have problems. We see many posters of missing girls in town. It’s finally Jonny’s birthday, and Hildie makes her a cake. “I already made a wish for you.” The cake seems to be filled with blood, and she pukes it right up. She runs outside, screaming, and it’s all very strange as the blood bubbles and boils. Hildie says the cake is “an old family recipe.”
Hildie says that she calls it “Forevering,” a strange kind of proxy empathy. It runs in the family. “It’s a kind of possession in reverse. We feel all the feelings.” She explains that it’s going to keep happening forever, but we don’t really see what she’s talking about yet. And the powers seem to be somewhat different for each family member, so Johnny will have to explore hers for herself.
At school, Jonny sees a picture of Evelyn on one of the “missing posters” and starts to feel something. Afterward, her friends notice that she smells like Evelyn. Evelyn is alive somewhere, and Jonny can feel what she does.
Jonny goes to stay with her friend Electra for the night. They make out under the sheets. Electra talks about her miscarriage and not-boyfriend, Kirk. The next morning, everyone hears that another friend, Aviva, has gone missing, but they also found Evelyn’s body.
There’s some weirdness going on between Principal Burke and the school nurse, Marcy, who appears to have had some cosmetic surgery.
Electra and Jonny go to a party at Kirk’s place to ask him about the missing girls since he went out with all of them. We see Jonny accidentally synchronize with the movements and feelings of the partygoers as she walks through the room. She can’t really control her power. Kirk’s all messed up and freaking out, he doesn’t know anything about the girls. He’s clearly involved; someone is killing Kirk’s girlfriends, so Jonny wants to be his next girl.
Kirk takes a little convincing, but he goes along with it eventually… until Police Officer Sterling shows up, Kirk’s father. He insists that he drive her home, and she doesn’t notice the man in the backseat who chloroforms her.
Jonny wakes up on the table where we saw Evelyn earlier. There’s a man there in a mask who tells her not to cry or scream. He plugs a tube into a “port” in Jonny’s chest and then plugs the other end into his own chest. He knocks her out again.
She wakes up and runs into Aviva, April, and Darby, who are also prisoners there. “We’re being stripped for parts. If you cry, he’ll take your tongue.” This has been going on for a long time. Aviva explains that Evelyn pulled out her “port” and it made a fountain of blood. Jonny asks her to pull hers out as well.
The killer comes in, and we see a huge puddle of blood in Jonny’s bed. He reaches over to touch it, and the puddle pulls him in. She pushes him down to the bottom and then climbs out of the puddle. The four girls then look for a way out.
Hildie and another woman drive up in a van and load the four girls in the back. The other woman is Jean, Jonny’s mother, Jean. Inside, we see the killer’s arm reach out of the blood puddle.
Jonny and Jean talk about her birth, which is complicated. She had been disguising herself as Gene, who Jonny thought was her father, all along. She can not only “tune in” on other people, but she can also become them. She became “Gene” to hide from Jonny’s real father. It was safe, and she liked the privilege that being a man gave to her.
Jonny still doesn’t know who the killer is or where he lives. Jean feels that Jonny’s father is around here somewhere.
Eventually, back at school, Marcy, who is heavily bandaged, calls an assembly. There’s a ceremony to honor the kidnapping survivors. Kirk is Marcy’s stepson, and he reads them all a letter. He swears that he’s going to find whoever did this. Also, his dad has gone missing. During the assembly, the principal’s chest starts bleeding, and so does Jonny’s.
Jean comes in the back door and finds Principal Burke, who is Jonny’s real father. She grabs him and puts him in the back of the van, kidnapped. He wakes up, and there’s quite a fight. She grows fangs and pulls out his heart…
Commentary
It’s a very slow starter, but once it gets going, it’s really good. We’re never quite sure of all of Jonny’s powers, but they seem interesting as she explores them.
I’m still not sure what was going on with Marcy, who seemed to be receiving “parts” from the girls, or why the principal was doing any of this, but it was pretty cool!