Mr. Jones

Karl Mueller – 2013 – USA

This is a trippy supernatural horror film that has a lot of great ideas but is ultimately a letdown because it remains satisfied to be reminiscent of far too many other popular films instead of breaking out in its own direction.  It starts out very intriguingly; a young couple isolate themselves in the hills to make a documentary, and just as they are losing interest in it, discover several primitive sculptures propped up in the woods that look like they were created by the witch in The Blair Witch Project.  These turn out to be “scarecrows;” part of a series made by a famous and reclusive outsider artist known as ‘Mr. Jones.’  At first the filmmakers are excited by the prospect of finding Jones and hope to make him the new subject of their project, but as they continue to explore Jones’ house and surrounding woods, come to fear an evil secret behind the scarecrows.  Apparently there’s some sort of inter-dimensional portal or gate-to-hell or some such thing around there, and the scarecrows are intended to keep people away from it.  Time and reality start to collapse, leading to a mind-bending final act in which the characters are either going crazy or playing a part in ushering in the apocalypse, whichever you like.  It’s not a bad film, in my opinion, and I found the “found footage” trope less annoying than usual, but it stops short of doing anything very original.  The aspect I liked the most was the introductory stuff about the outsider artist and his scarecrows, and I increasingly lost interest the more the story careened towards the supernatural.