Horror Off-Season: Mr. Jones

Mr. Jones is a 2013 found footage movie written and directed by Karl Mueller, starring Jon Foster and Sarah Jones.  It's the director's feature debut, having previously written and directed a short film called Widow.

Mr. Jones follows a young couple, Penny and Scott, who move from the city to a gorgeous cabin in the mountains of California.  Penny has left her burgeoning career as a photographer to support Scott's dream of becoming a documentary filmmaker by filming nature documentary.  Unfortunately for their relationship, Scott didn't really think through what the point of said documentary was.  After several aimless weeks Scott stumbles onto the "studio" cabin of an art community myth/folk tale...the eponymous Mr. Jones.

Overall, I liked the movie, but I feel like it hit points where it became a little too abstract to really communicate the interesting ideas about the nature of dreams it hinted at having.  But then despite dropping the ball somewhat on getting through with conceptual ideas the final reel is really, really heavy-handed with making sure the audience grasps what literally happened.  Well, as much as the word "literally" can be applied to what happens in the 3rd act, with as symbol/dream logic/metaphysics heavy as it was.

I think a lot of the dialogue between Penny and Scott is improvised, which tends to result in a lot of their dialogue being talking over each other and shouting their names.  Further, this drags down the opening act of the movie because not much is happening yet, and it's mostly the characters talking to each other and setting up why they dive so hard into the Mr. Jones story.  Fortunately the middle parts work really well, where Penny and Scott are split up because Scott is interviewing experts on Mr. Jones in NYC and Penny is taking photos and stalking the guy through the woods.  It's really effective at building the mythos of the character and making him seem creepy, not really because of any malevolence on his part but just because of his unknown motivations and the odd and unnerving effects that follow around people who receive his artwork.

The final act is visually interesting, but incredibly confusing.  The fluffy visual aspects that don't really serve the plot drag on a good amount but the important points blast past so quickly I almost didn't notice them.  There's also something they hint at during the NYC interviews that gets worked into the dream world portions of the finale, but is so heavily emphasized it loses its original nightmare connotation and becomes silly. For anyone wondering, in an interview a guy who burned his Mr. Jones piece becomes plagued by a nightmare in which he's chasing himself to the point where he can no longer tell the dream from reality. This manifests in the finale by a hooded figure dressed exactly like Scott chasing Scott and Penny around while holding a camera to his face. It was cool, but then became heavy handed. Then the final resolution is also an interesting twist, but is reiterated by an extended closing narration.  It lent a symmetry in that a narration from Scott bookends the movie but it felt a bit heavy handed.

So my final verdict is Mr. Jones isn't a bad movie by any stretch, it's just undeniably weird.  So weird it does seem to distract from what I thought the feeling and themes of the movie were.  It could have been better but I feel like it could have been significantly worse.  I was able to take the moments I enjoyed and ride out the weirdness of the end and by the time the narration was explaining the ending I was already checked out, but nothing really bothered me.  If you spend too much effort trying to understand it or getting deeply into the movie, it might annoy you.  But as it stands it's good light viewing.

Interesting note, all the artwork in the movie was made by a Halloween artist named pumpkinrot.  His galleries are amazing, I'd love to find this guy's yard and wander through the fog with this stuff.

--PXA