‘The Jessica Cabin’
Stream it on Amazon Prime Video.
Have you ever said to someone: “I would kill to spend more time with you”? The characters in Daniel Montgomery’s gay horror comedy say it a lot, with macabre but unexpectedly tender and very funny consequences for the living and the dead.
The film opens as a gay couple (Chase Williamson and Will Tranfo) check in at a secluded rental property of the title. There, a pair of ghost best friends — Jackson (Montgomery) and Taylor (Riley Rose Critchlow) — watch their new visitors eat, sleep and have sex. But the fun quickly takes a sinister turn, poignantly lifting the curtain on how Jackson and Taylor came to haunt the house and offering a reminder that trauma doesn’t always leave a room when people do.
Montgomery, who wrote and directed this low-budget charmer, smartly balances the creepy and the nutty in a queer story that’s as much about ghosts being catty as it is about loneliness in the here and agency in the afterlife. The cast is across-the-board good at conveying dark humor, especially in scenes that feel entirely improvised. There’s nothing gory or truly scary here; you’re more likely to cry than scream watching these big-hearted mortals and spirits maneuver their bizarre liminal world.
Like many cater-waiters, Kay (Khosi Ngema) and her gay bestie Riley (Matthew Vey) are eager to have a good time on a rich guy’s dime. That’s why they’ve hidden away one night in the mountaintop mansion of a smug billionaire, Pierce (Francis Chouler), after their party shift there ends. Riley leaves for a booty call, leaving Kay alone in the fortresslike home when Pierce, and later his girlfriend (Alex McGregor), unexpectedly return, kicking off a vicious cat-and-mouse game that the writer-director Jem Garrard lines with gruesome twists to bloody the way before a blowout finale.
