IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Without the labor of the writers and actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Released: 15th June
Seen: 3rd September
Before we begin, a warning that this film deals with the very heavy subject of spousal abuse, in particular gaslighting and abuse of those with a medical condition which might be a triggering topic for some. If that applies to you then you might want to skip this movie entirely, though you also might’ve skipped it already, because it seemed to get very little promotion which makes a depressing amount of sense when you realise it’s a queer horror film about spousal abuse which doesn’t tend to be a marketable film. If that isn’t a trigger for you though, keep going on (also if you got viscerally angry at the idea of being given a trigger warning… grass, go find some and touch it)
Jagged Mind focuses on Billie (Maisie Richardson-Sellers) whose life is a bit all over the place. On the positive side, she has a new girlfriend named Alex (Shannon Woodward) who seemingly dotes on her all the time but on the downside, Billie is experiencing regular blackouts. These blackouts and moments of memory loss seem to be tied to a medical condition she has that’s similar to early-onset Alzheimer’s which makes her more and more reliant on Alex the more these ailments grow. However, the worse they get the more they seem to include little flashes of events that Billie can’t remember fully, events of Alex being abusive that don’t seem to line up to Billie’s lived experience, like she’s stuck in some kind of time loop until certain events are done in a certain way, and trying to figure out why that’s happening will lead Billie to learn a harsh truth about her relationship.
Taking the story of an abusive relationship and melding it with the idea of a time loop is a genuinely fascinating idea, since a time loop created by someone intentionally to make a relationship work might seem cute from one perspective but from another can just be horrifyingly abusive and Jagged Mind plays with that idea fairly well. It takes a little bit of time for it to be clear that we are doing a time loop thing which does make it a little harder to keep up with Jagged Mind at the opening but by the time you catch on to what they’re doing it all works a lot better, allowing the metaphor of just abusing someone into compliance work as intended.
It takes a little while for it to become clear what’s being done because this time loop doesn’t behave the way we’re commonly used to in these kinds of movies. If you look at something like Happy Death Day where a time loop was involved you have these big moments that get repeated over and over again with enough repetition that the audience clearly knows what is and isn’t part of the regular loop, Jagged Mind avoids that, for the most part, choosing to only repeat a few minor moments here and there in a way that can be hard to recognise if you happen to not be paying full attention which can happen in a film with heavy topics like this, making it a little harder to watch.
Jagged Mind also doesn’t really hold its cards close to its chest for that long, the big reveal about how bad this relationship is happens pretty early on, which robs the film of some of its real power. It’s not as shocking when the main character learns about it because the audience knew about it 30 minutes ago and it was kind of painfully obvious from the start, we don’t get that cathartic moment of “Oh shit, this horrible thing we kind of suspected is actually happening” because it just doesn’t give it enough build-up. It’s shocking because it’s just showing the abuse, not because it’s building up to it properly and creating some actual tension that could’ve made things so much better.
It is pretty awesome though that Jagged Mind made this a story about a lesbian relationship but the conflict is one that could apply to literally any kind of couple. It’s a horror that transcends sexuality so avoiding doing what would be the default choice for most filmmakers. Seeing someone making the choice to show a queer relationship in a story where it could’ve been any kind of relationship is commendable and again they make sure it’s clear that the problem in this relationship is not about sexuality but about an abusive asshole doing abusive things. It’s a small thing but it does matter in the long run.
Sadly though, Jagged Mind kind of runs into the problem that there isn’t enough here to really be engaging throughout. This film started life as a short and you can kind of tell that there’s some serious padding going on, story beats that just do not work with this much space between them. The time loop element in particular just makes it feel like a large part of Jagged Mind’s time is spent chasing its own tail, delaying things long enough to hit the runtime needed. There are entire characters that should be major parts of the film based on how we’re clearly meant to react to their storylines but because they don’t appear prominently enough it’s harder to care. It’s a delicate balancing act to juggle a touchy subject, representation and a strange storytelling device all at the same time and while this film puts a lot more focus on the first two, it fumbles that time loop device enough that it does keep this film from being truly great.
Jagged Mind is certainly an interesting film that handles a heavy topic well and has more than a few great horrifying sequences but its lack of focus in regards to how it tells its story leads to a film that’s only good when it has all the right elements to be something great. It’s a film that I’m glad exists because this kind of story should be told and we should absolutely be seeing more of this kind of representation, but I just wish it was a little tighter in the details so it could be the great film it clearly wants to be.
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