2013 July 06 « HORROR BOOM

This one definitely caught our interest. Chad Crawford Kinkle’s debut film, which premiered at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival (and won its 2011 screenwriting competition), tells the story of a pregnant teen named Ada trying to escape a backwoods community when she discovers that she may be sacrificed to a creature in a pit. The entity in the pit requires a life for keeping the community safe. The face of the person to be sacrificed is crafted onto a ceramic jug. When ignored, the entity unleashes an evil onto the community. Now no one is safe as tragedy befalls each member one by one and they soon realize that the pit wants what it wants.. Check out the creepy theatrical trailer right now…

Yep, that was Sean Young you saw as Ada’s scary mother …but you may not have recognized Sean Bridgers, who starred as the deeply disturbing, horrible, shitty, ultra-misogynistic male lead (possibly one of the most vile and hated antagonists who was deserving of an especially horrible death featured in any horror film in recent years) from Lucky McKee‘s* controversial 2012 stunner The Woman. In this trailer his face is mostly disguised by his beard and glasses, and he plays a very different type of role in Jug Face.

The official website is packed full of info; Chad Kinkle gives a very fascinating account under the section titled Director’s Thoughts that cemented our interest in making sure we saw Jug Face ASAP:

The idea for Jug Face came from a trip to a southern folk pottery art museum in north Georgia. My wife’s aunt and uncle live just up the street from the newly built museum and wanted to take us by. The pottery that I found there was surprising.

It wasn’t the bowls or dishes, it was the face jugs that caught my attention. They were basic jugs but with ugly faces on them that were used to store moonshine and poisons for farming. I was immediately attracted to the disturbing, grotesque expressions of the faces.

As I watched a video of a potter in overalls talking about making face jugs, I saw in my mind a possessed potter with white eyes standing in a pit. Then I saw the potter craft a face jug with a girl’s face on it. I knew that it must be the face of someone from the community that the potter lived in. That the pit wanted her to be sacrificed.

The idea captured exactly what I focus on in my films; a southern gothic literature feel mixed with the eighties horror movies that I grew up watching.

SOLD! Jug Face will be available on VOD in just a few days – July 8th, to be exact. A theatrical release will follow on August 9th via Modernciné’s new distribution outfit, Modern Distributors.. The film stars Lauren Ashley Carter (also in The Woman) as Ada. Besides the considerable talent mentioned above, Jug Face also features Larry Fessenden, Daniel Manche, Chip Ramsey, and Kairlin Cullum.