Mr. Jones

A young couple leaves civilisation behind to move to an abandoned house in the woods. Naturally, they record everything with a camera, because that’s what people escaping civilisation do all the time (well, yeah, the bloke is a filmmaker looking for inspiration, but it’s still a little dodgy). When I realised Mr. Jones would be another of the endless series of found-footage films, I almost gave up on it, but gradually, its quality began to win me over. In the woods that surround the house, these documentarists come across totemic scarecrows and their masked creator, who the girl identifies as an anonymous artists, relatively famous in certain circles (something like Banksy), known as Mr. Jones. Suddenly, the documentary gets a central theme and now they can begin to investigate and reveal the mysterious mythology behind Mr. Jones. And that investigation gets fairly atmospheric and creepily unsettling – after a long time, a horror movie that gave me a pleasant feeling of anxiety. The scary scarecrows of twigs and bones, the burnt scary scarecrows, the scary lair of Mr. Jones, the scary underground passages beneath the scary lair of Mr. Jones, the scary Mr. Jones, etc. In the last act, the space-time of the story falls into a surrealistic nightmare that combines both elements of last year’s good indie horror flick Resolution and the know-how of David Lynch about messing with the heads of the viewers without loosing their interest. Mr. Jones, and especially its last act, is an interesting experience that right now I don’t feel the need (and the courage) to rationalise. For the time being, I’m happy to have really enjoyed it. (2014.04.26)