Watched: 10/07/2025
Format: Shudder
Viewing: First
Director: Travis Stevens
During the Q&A for the screening of Re-Animator, star Barbara Crampton mentioned she'd produced and starred in a horror movie recently, Jakob's Wife (2021). I recalled the name from last year's mini-dive into Crampton's work, but didn't get to the movie. But we've fixed that.
One fun thing about horror is that even when you say "vampire movie", it only really means a potential set of rules and maybe a gentle push a few directions. Eggers' Nosferatu is not Coogler's Sinners is not Garrard's Slay. You can change up the rules, and change up the look, as long as you do a few key things, usually involving blood consumption and slow discovery of evil. But not always!
The high concept of vampirism can be used to explore themes well beyond "a foreigner has moved in next door, and probably brought rats with him". To that end, Jakob's Wife digs not just into the traditional roles of men and women, but of women as they reach a certain age, denied a life of their own in prescribed servitude.
Our titular Jakob (Larry Fessenden) is a pastor of a church in a dying southern town. He's leading his diminishing flock, preaching traditional values of a man's role in his family. His wife, Anne (Barbara Crampton) is the dutiful pastor's wife. She's past the point of youth, married thirty years and feeling life passing her by as the perpetual prop to her husband.
The one activity she does on her own, which Jakob dismisses, is working to get the old gin mill repurposed as a shopping and recreation area. Her committee has hired her former flame to do the work to bring it to life. When Anne and Tom go to see the decrepit mill, Tom makes a move on Anne, but in that instant, they come across a vampire.
Anne returns home, changed.
SPOILERS
In one lane, the movie follows the familiar track of Anne's realization of her physical transformation, but the story is her metamorphosis from demure pastor's wife to someone finding the person they thought they lost or never got to be as the vampiric lust for life kicks in. The movie certainly is built on the framework of a horror film, but leans hard into those themes, powered by some terrific dark comedy, especially in the back half as Anne and Jakob reckon with her new state, and Jakob wants to support Anne, while also finding her new assertiveness confusing.
What's interesting is that our "Master" here is not seeking ownership of Anne. Instead, they're offering to set her free - and not in the usual "won't it be cool to turn into mist and eat people, if you agree to do my bidding?" way. Instead, the Master is offering Anne the power to be her own Master. Which sure colors who considers themselves Anne's "master" now.
Not all of it lines up - people go missing but are unmissed. It sure seems like what's going on at the main house would draw the attention of neighbors, but doesn't, except when it does. But I'm also aware, this is a movie about the big ideas and not the plot and logic details. This ain't that kind of movie, kid. But I was curious if the parent-aged Jakob and Anne had children who had moved on, or were childless, as those are two very different points in life.
The Master is a Nosferatu-style vampire played by the increasingly popular Bonnie Aarons in what I *think* is an intentionally gender-ambiguous way, but indicates at one point that she is/was a woman. Which both throws some new color on her desire to "free" Anne, as well as the one sexual seduction scene with Anne and the Master.
The film has some nice cinematography, showing a town on its last legs but with echoes of what was a vibrant community. But also the twilight that Anne moves into, with light blasting and then vanishing as the movie progresses.
It's interesting to also see a vampire movie about people who are not, you know, already young and with their lives ahead of them, given the chance to be young and hot forever. Instead, it's about someone with a lifetime of feeling unseen, and it's a really great concept.
Everyone hits their marks in the movie, but Crampton's performance is interesting. She seems so normal at points, even as a vampire, that it's a bit disarming. She's not someone going through a tortuous process, exactly, she's someone feeling good in her own skin for the first time in decades. She's not playing grand guignol (except when she is) or some wild-eyed animal crazed with blood-lust, she's like a person who is having a good year after several bad years - that I'm not sure I'd seen before.
Anyway, I dug it. Every time I thought I had the movie clocked, it pivoted. Good stuff for Spooky Season.
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