[Film Review] Jethica (2022)

Warning: This review contains spoilers 

We need to talk about another Kevin and that is the basis of the horror-comedy-noir-supernatural romp through scenic Santa Fe that is Jethica; how do you solve a problem like Kevin? Especially if Kevin happens to be dead?

Elena (Callie Hernandez) teases out the story to her anonymous lover, the no-name guy she won’t be taking back to her place. Why? Well, she has her reasons and they begin with another no-name guy…one she killed. The ultimate post-coital femme fatale confession, but all is not as it seems. Hiding out in her late grandmother’s trailer in Santa Fe after the incident, where the isolated desert landscape and coolness of her environment only emphasize her isolation, Elena spends her days giving rides to a hapless hitchhiker she befriends and lighting her grandmother’s innumerable prayer candles. Then a chance encounter with a high school friend, Jessica (Ashley Denise Robinson) leads to coffee at her place. Jessica is also running away from civilization, but in her case it’s from a stalker whose countless videos she’s kept finally introduce us to a named man. Kevin and his diatribes; confessions of love, pleas to see her, not so vague threats to please please please let him love, protect, touch her assault us with the speech impediment that titles the movie, have chased her all the way out of California back to the safety of home, too. Home is not a haven when Kevin shows up, though.

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Jessica stubbornly insists it can’t be him when Elena breaks the news he’s out in front of the trailer. Why? Well, she and Elena have yet another thing in common as she reveals his dead body in the trunk of her car. It seems Elena’s grandmother was a bit of a mystic and the land they’re on has powers. Knew there was a reason for so many candles. So, when Jessica crossed the boundary with the body, well, if it stalks like Kevin and lisps like Kevin, it’s probably Kevin…’s ghost. 

What follows is the perfect juxtaposition of horror comedy combining the stomach-churning dread of men who will not accept the word no, crossed with the sleepover rituals of girls just being girls trying to exorcize a pesky supernatural force. Director Pete Ohs keeps the focus on the girls but the ranting Kevin in the background makes even the vast landscape of the desert seem claustrophobic, where even the wind whistling sounds like the screaming in their heads. 

There are three ways they can do this Elena says. A ghost can choose to leave, another ghost can be summoned to get rid of the original ghost, or you can give the ghost what it wants. Well, the whole issue is that Kevin will not leave. That mind-numbing barrage of word ammo toxic men never seem to run out of is starkly captured by Kevin’s relentless pacing and non-stop inner-turned outer monologue. Even death can’t stop him once the girls point this out to him. He twists the facts to suit his needs. Now he can be with Jessica all the time, he doesn’t need to eat or sleep or go away ever. There is comedy in his blank realization but I think any woman would recognize that familiar fear of helplessness that preys on their vulnerability. The cops don’t help until something happens is a common refrain in real life and something Jessica mentions to Elena. It’s why she took matters into her own hands. Well, now they really can’t help with an entity that has no corporeal form but is just as big a nuisance and threat. Another ghost? Can’t help but be reminded of a recent popular video where someone stuck a snake inside a wall to get rid of a mouse. What gets rid of the snake then? Or what if the mouse turns out to be a mongoose in this case as Kevin destroys Ghost Two. Another chilling fact; he’s not just a harmless lovesick fool, he is capable of violence and Jessica was right to fear for her safety.  

The wishful thinking of Jethica comes from the fact that girls finally make Kevin hear them, something that statistically does not happen in real life situations. His fear and uncertainty at coming to terms with his own death echoes the exact way he’s been making Jessica feel all along. She’s free now because he’s finally heard what she’s been trying to tell him and sees the parallel. His absolution comes from finding someone to hear him as well; Elena’s own victim, the hitchhiker she’s been in loop with, giving him rides and letting him haunt her after she hit him with her car. Their paths finally diverge, the men going one way we assume to the beyond, and the women back to their lives. While this is a rather fairy tale happy ending to a story about abusive male behavior that seems to undercut the very serious consequences of the escalation of these sorts of situations, it seems a fair trade if Jessica and Elena can get away with murder and manslaughter respectively.

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