JONAH LIVES (2012)

Studio:       Wild Eye Releasing
Director:    Luis Carvalho
Writer:       Luis Carvalho
Producer:  Gary Andre
Stars:     Jocelyn Padilla, Nicole LaSala, Ryan Boudreau, James Barrett, Rob Roy, Brinke Stevens, Aaron Peaslee, Cesar Pereira

Review Score:

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Summary:

Six teenage friends inadvertently resurrect a vengeful murder victim during a Ouija board séance.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Francis and his girlfriend Barbara, Tony and his girlfriend Lydia, and their friends Johnny and Jessie hang out in Francis’ basement after spending the day together. Looking for something to do that evening, Francis goes up to the main house where his parents are hosting a party and retrieves a Ouija board.

Tony refuses to play, but the other five friends contact a spirit named Jonah Matthias who tells them that his wife murdered him with poison to inherit Jonah’s money. When Lydia becomes briefly possessed by Jonah’s spirit, the friends decide to try fully summoning him. Lydia, Barbara, Francis, Jessie, and Johnny go into trances and start convulsing while using the board. Tony smashes the planchette, snapping everyone back to reality. Outside, Jonah rises from his grave.

Jonah comes to the house and kills Tony. Francis thinks the killer is their drugged-out friend Joe, but the others insist that Jonah has returned from the dead. The five friends barricade themselves in the basement. Jessie dies from an asthma attack when his inhaler empties.

Meanwhile, the adults continue partying upstairs. One of the guests is Zora Matthias, Jonah’s widow.

His psyche tormented by guilt over Tony and Jessie’s deaths, Francis goes in search of Jonah. Johnny accompanies him. Barbara reveals to Lydia that she is pregnant with Francis’ baby after Francis exits the room. Johnny tries distracting Jonah when Francis is cornered in the hallway, but Jonah kills Francis. Johnny returns to Barbara and Lydia and barricades the three of them in the basement.

Barbara convinces Lydia and Johnny that they can send Jonah back to the grave by using the Ouija board. Assuming that they successfully banished Jonah following their second séance, the trio tries to leave. Laughing maniacally, Lydia opens the basement door and allows Jonah inside. Barbara and Johnny flee back to the basement room with Lydia and lock themselves inside once again.

Jonah breaks into the room. Lydia willingly invites Jonah to tear apart her neck with his teeth. Lydia drops dead.

While Barbara hides, Johnny battles Jonah using a shovel. Jonah wrestles the shovel away from Johnny and uses it to sever the boy’s arm. Jonah then punches Johnny in the head and kills him.

Jonah retrieves the Ouija board, destroys it, and leaves the basement. Barbara emerges from her hiding spot and makes her way up to the main house where she collapses in front of the party guests. Alarmed, Francis’ father runs to the basement and screams in horror when he finds the bodies.

In the morning, paramedics arrive for Barbara as police process the crime scene. Zora gets into her car to leave. Jonah surprises his former wife by revealing himself to be waiting for her in the backseat.

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Review:

“Jonah Lives” opens cold.  A young man hyperventilates nervously while watching his friends convulse with eyes rolled back in their heads.  At the center of their circle sits a Ouija board.  Without muttering much aside from “Jesus!” and “Lydia,” the young man smashes the planchette, snapping the others out of their trances and ending the séance.  Lydia laughs maniacally.  Outside, the camera tilts down from the tombstone of Jonah Matthias as a reanimated corpse digs its way up from the dirt.

When this midnight montage suddenly switched without a sequitur to a daytime scene of teenage two-on-two football awkwardly blocked in a 24-square-foot space, I expected “XX Hours Earlier” to appear onscreen and fill out the framing.  It didn’t.  Clearly, these six friends used a Ouija board and, one way or another, brought the dead back to life.  The audience gets it.  But who are these kids?  Who is Jonah?  How are they connected, if at all?  Was the Ouija scene foreshadowing?  A dream sequence?  A premonition?  Did the resurrection happen the previous evening and now it is the next day?

The answer to those last several questions is no.  Someone seemingly put it in the director’s ear that horror films should start with a scare in the first few minutes, so a scene was pulled out of place and repositioned after the opening credits without context.  That’s only the wrong foot, but the remaining limbs and appendages of “Jonah Lives” are no less prone to freshman filmmaking faux pas.

Having filmed in 2011, “Jonah Lives” debuted in 2012, had its film festival premiere in 2013, and finally received wide home video distribution in 2015.  In those four years, “Jonah Lives” was the only film made by writer/director Luis Carvalho.  Several of the actors did not appear in any other features during that time, either.  These notes are relevant because it offers an idea of how entrenched some of the associated talent is (or is not) in professional filmmaking careers.  In other words, this is a group of predominantly amateur family and friends making a DIY one-off.

Cuts read like editing room errors, as though arranged how Nostradamus ordered his quatrains by throwing individual shots in the air and piecing them back together according to how they hit the floor.  In between kill scenes where the kids battle Jonah in the basement, the camera jumps randomly to shots of parents partying upstairs, even though the separate threads don’t parallel well.  New guests arrive upstairs, a teen’s head is bashed in downstairs.  Two shrews kibitz about the uselessness of men upstairs, another teenager dies downstairs.  The bizarre mistiming creates an off-balance rhythm highlighting a confused concept of how to tell a story through film.

The movie doesn’t even get the basics of a vengeful ghost plotline right.  Jonah is resurrected to take revenge against a scheming wife who poisoned him for the inheritance.  So what is his reason to waste time plodding around a basement caving in teenagers’ skulls while said wife fishes keys from a swingers party bowl in the main house?

“Jonah Lives” is also chock full of peculiar Christian subtext.  One boy implores a young girl to read the Bible for her own betterment.  One girl crosses herself while walking past a closed down church.  Crucifixes appear on necklaces and set dressing with additional religious iconography appearing in the background.  Characters recite the Hail Mary, refuse to play Ouija on spiritual belief grounds, and repeatedly call on Jesus to deliver everyone from evil.  Speculation might wonder if “Jonah Lives” has a not-so-hidden religious agenda, except none of this material coalesces into any meaningful message.

First-time writer/director Luis Carvalho knows to open with a relative bang and to cast scream queen Brinke Stevens as a recognizable name, but there is no rescuing “Jonah Lives” from its underdone acting, overbaked dialogue, and derivative setpieces.  Lightning flashes illuminate a cemetery during the resurrection.  The camera spins dizzyingly over the Ouija board when activity grows hectic.  An asthmatic character’s inhaler empties at an inconvenient moment.  Most of the movie is similarly contrived, unconvincing, or both.

Genuine passion incentivizes the rookie cast and crew, but there is a fair deal of collective inexperience behind the camera, as well.  Effort doesn’t always translate into entertainment however, and the greenness of those involved is what shines brightest on this movie’s screen.

Review Score:  20

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