Jakob's Wife Review (Film, 2021)
content warning: blood, gore, violence against women, foul language
Anne is married to Jakob, the town Minister. She has a good life now, but it is nothing like she envisioned for herself when she was younger. After seeing the reaction to a teenage girl’s disappearance after leaving mass, Anne decides to take some risks and bring her own life back into focus. Then she gets attacked by something in the dark.
Jakob’s Wife is a throwback domestic thriller with vampires. The tone, the style, the characters, the themes, even the conflict feels like the peak of 1960s/early 1970s horror. Different genres of horror tend to rotate in and out of focus—we’re seeing a lot of haunting as metaphor films right now—but Jakob’s Wife feels like the modern extension of the critically acclaimed community turned upside horror of 60 years ago.
The score is magnificent. There is this haunted theme with a woman humming a lullaby over a piano that slowly transforms with echoes, reverbs, and layering into something more sinister. It’s an approach to horror scoring that was more prevalent in the 1960s/1970s that can still work today. This style is especially effective in this context since it reinforces the conflict between the Church and the Master. The theme appears when a girl or a woman is alone, shortly before they hear their own name whispered in the dark.
Barbara Crampton shines as Anne. This is a deep role that allows her to show off her incredible range as an actor. Her Anne is clearly hiding a lot beneath the surface to maintain the perfect image of a minister’s wife, and those secrets only run deeper as the mysterious force that attacked her makes its presence known.
The screenplay from writer/director Travis Stevens and writers Mark Steensland and Kathy Charles is pretty spectacular. This is a fresh take on vampire tropes using the form of the modern feminist werewolf film to recenter the story on the woman transforming. Jakob’s Wife is a horror film about a woman reclaiming her strength and identity after a lifetime of serving as someone’s better half. The title tells you everything you need to know. She’s not allowed to be Anne; she’s Jakob’s wife. That’s her role, her duty, her identity. This is the story of how she learns to define herself again.
Stevens’ direction hits on these themes in a fascinating way. The use of gore is quite unique. Some of the more disturbing visuals in the film are not the bitemarks on Anne’s neck or the blood from the attack. The true disgust comes from the dull, inconsiderate behavior of Jakob. There are loud, squelching closeups of his chewing, his snoring, his lip smacking. The most mundane things that we all see or hear are nightmare fuel, while the shock of unhealing injuries and a new taste for blood are oddly calming.
Jakob’s Wife is an unpredictable horror film in the best ways possible. There are things you’re meant to know right away to understand the basic concept. Then everything twists further and further, uncovering secrets buried longer than you could ever imagine.
Jakob’s Wife is streaming on Shudder.
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