Jug Face (2013) - Chad Crawford Kinkle

Taking place in a backwoods community, Chad Crawford Kinkle's Jug Face is the story of Ada, a teenage girl who discovers she may be pregnant due to a incestuous relationship with her brother.  A backwards community that lives more like a cult, they routinely perform human sacrifices to appease a mysterious pit which they believe keeps their community safe and intact.  In order to pick the person to be sacrificed, a ceramic jug is created, with the lucky individuals face being imprinted.  When Ada discovers that her face has appeared on the most recently crafted Jug, she hides it from everyone, unleashing this unspeakable evil entity on the community with tragic results.  Jug Face is a anomalous horror film that doesn't do enough to make itself truly stand out.  Going into Jug Face I was hoping for something similiar to McKee's The Woman, but while Jug Face is just as morbid and subversive, it fails at ever achieving anything beyond these rather superficial qualities.  The film wants to get under you skin and it certainly achieves that with some creepy atmospherics but there are lots of thematically rich elements that are never fully realized in Jug Face as it succumbs to being nothing more than a camp fire story.  The filmmakers of Jug Face show a lot of restraint, slowly unwinding the narrative threads but it never has a great sense of escalation, as I found the story feeling a little tedious throughout its running time.   For all its faults Jug Face is still a promising first time feature from writer/director Chad Crawford Kinkle, who shows some ability to create a special type of film, given his story has a more-realized thematic intention. 
5.5/10

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