I really loved Jug Face. From the opening credits to the very end, Jug Face commits to its vision with strong storytelling and seamless acting. Jug Face takes what Jim Mickle and Nick Damici tried to do in We Are What We Are, create an American pagan horror narrative that examines the hypocrisy inherent in abusive, insular communities, particularly towards teenage girls, in the name of religion and surpasses it.
Jug Face is about a community that is similar to our preconceptions of what a conservative, insular backwoods community would look like then upends our vision by making this community one that the isolated village in The Wicker Man would be proud to know. Unlike The Wicker Man, Jug Face’s main character is the lowest member of this community, but completely sympathetic despite managing to transgress boundaries that even THIS community deems inviolate. Lauren Ashley Carter plays the main character, and Jug Face only works because of her strong performance. Jug Face’s entire cast is magnificent, including Sean Young, whom I haven’t seen since Blade Runner and Star Trek: Renegades, and Sean Bridgers, whose work I’m completely unfamiliar with.
Jug Face escapes the Deliverance stereotypes while surpassing them by refusing to let the audience forget that many people in that community at root have similar basic desires as us, but are warped by their choice to constantly sacrifice in exchange for diminishing to nonexistent returns. Jug Face belongs in the same category as The Storm of the Century and The Mist, but what makes it more chilling is that people in the outside world who are in no real danger make similar choices as the people caught in the supernatural conundrum. So Jug Face does not permit the viewer to pat his or herself on the back, but suggests that you would do worse with less at stake even though you may consider yourself more civilized.
Jug Face wants the viewer to be outraged then hopefully take an introspective pause to ask your self if the supernatural scenario is really a metaphor for the daily evils that we sacrifice children to and indoctrinate children in. Jug Faces ask us what are those evils and demands that we weigh the benefits of disrupting the cycle of psychological and physical abuse versus the conceptual benefits of that cycle. The answer: Snowpiercer.