Perhaps the best character in Jessabelle are the bayous themselves.

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 26, 2014

The more complicated it gets, the less scary it becomes.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 10, 2014

As the film racks up incidents and characters and explanations, the mystery dissipates. It's a strange spectacle: a horror film that spends as much time dismantling suspense as it does building it.

| Nov 7, 2014

An ineffective, derivative, and awkwardly executed mash-up of ghost flicks and voodoo movies.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 7, 2014

"Jessabelle" is interesting in some of the small details, and in its strong sense of the Louisiana bayou atmosphere, and then it completely falls apart when it starts being a horror film.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 7, 2014

Credit lead Sarah Snook's gentle, sympathetic performance for holding together this atmospheric film, especially during its silly-campy third act.

| Nov 7, 2014

How are VHS tapes, voodoo and the specter lurking in a house connected? Your impatience for answers is likely to eclipse your trepidation.

| Nov 6, 2014

One of the nice things about Jessabelle is that it isn't trying too hard.

| Original Score: B- | Nov 6, 2014

There are few scares here, but plenty of mild grossness. The absurd ending ties up the mystery in a way that's sure to annoy both supernaturalists and realists.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 5, 2014

Occasionally shivery, overly familiar ...

| Original Score: 2/4 | Nov 5, 2014

Rather than commit to exploring Jessabelle's existential crisis, the filmmakers opt to pile on the clichs straight until the rotten denouement.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Nov 5, 2014

While this Blumhouse production may be a less ruthlessly efficient scream machine than, say, its corporate sibling Ouija, it is much more atmospheric and benefits from a winning central performance from Snook.

| Original Score: B | Nov 5, 2014

The mystery drags, its clues never really registering - they just accumulate, along with hints of backstory, a laundry-like pile you would prefer not to deal with but will have to sort through eventually.

| Nov 4, 2014

Unfortunately, it's just when Jessabelle looks like it might transcend its haunted-house trappings that the Southern Gothic clichs rear their tortured, screaming heads

| Nov 3, 2014

The too-infrequent scare techniques ... are mostly by the book, rarely developing sufficient dread to heighten the film's rather unremarkable climax.

| Nov 3, 2014

The depths prove awfully shallow in this murky and derivative bayou gothic.

| Nov 3, 2014

An ineffective horror movie that draws most of its minimal shocks from familiar genre conventions that feel even mustier than usual.

Full Review | Nov 3, 2014