Jethica

Jethica is a dark comedy horror about a young woman’s story, told retrospectively from the back seat of a casual lover’s car as she confesses how she killed someone. Jethica is available to own or rent in the UK & Ireland via AppleTV, Amazon, Sky Store, Virgin Media, Google Play and RakutenTV.

Elena (Callie Hernandez) has hooked up with a stranger in the back of his car and after some forced small talk begins to confess her story of how she accidentally kills someone and why she was living alone in her Grandma’s trailer in New Mexico. She flashes back to meeting an old college friend Jessica (Ashley Denise Robinson) at the gas station near there and after inviting her to stay at her grandma’s she discovers Jessica has her own confession to make.

Jessica has a stalker (Will Madden) who has been constantly sending her videos and letters obsessing over their non-existent relationship and when he turns up suddenly looking for her the two girls turn to Elena’s grandma’s mystic ways with the afterlife to get rid of him.

Directed and produced by Peter Ohs as well as being co-written with the leading actors there’s a shared albeit slightly discombobulated vision that comes through in the script as various different tropes are added. The relationship between the two female friends Elena and Jessica is done in a quiet but afflicted way as one advises the other on how they should deal with their stalker situation using some voodoo like witchcraft. All the while the stalker rambles on incessantly with a lisp and painted face not unlike a cartoon caricature as he attempts to get in contact with Jessica. He manages to pitifully evoke a sense of sympathy as his delusional longing for his victim goes undeterred by his absolute rejection.

There’s a morbid poignancy to the film with the wide shots of the arid dessert landscape and its long roads providing a spectacular cinematic backdrop, which also intensifies the loneliness of the characters searching for somewhere to belong as they deal with their own personal strife. 

Jethica may not have you hiding behind the sofa but if you manage to watch it to its ambling end it’s the kind of movie that leaves a lasting melancholic thought not least for being the antithesis to the more typical gnawing for brains zombie horrors.