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George travels
to Mexico to find his half-sister,
Carolina, who's been missing for several days. His
mother, who lives there, isn't of much assistance but
luckily he finds help from a woman named Carmen, whose
friend's son recently went missing as well. As they
investigate further into the matter, they soon realize
that there might be something to this legend about
J-ok'el after all...
I try to review every single horror movie that gets a
theatrical release somewhere in the world but man,
J-ok'el was not an easy one to track down. It was
extremely unsuccessful in its home country so that
may be one of the reasons to why it's so difficult to
find, but the fact that it's absolutely horrible
probably helps as well. Seriously, this is the third
movie this year that I've seen that revolves around
the legend of La Llorona (The Wailer) and this was by
far the worst of the bunch. For whatever reason, the
movie was shot in English language despite being a
Mexican film. I'm sure that had it been shot in Spanish,
it'd have done much better at the box-office.
Either way, let's start this review like every other
and quickly describe the plot. George apparently has
his mother (played by Dee Wallace) and half-sister,
Carolina, in Mexico. Carolina has recently gone missing
so George decides to travel to Mexico to find out what
really happened to her. He soon meets Carmen and teams
up with her to investigate the mysterious disappearances
of several children in Mexico, only to find out that a
ghost, named J-ok'el by the locals (but is more commonly
known as La Llorona), seems to be behind everything.
The plot is standard Ring rip-off material as you can
probably tell and it probably should have been a
somewhat decent movie despite its shoe-string budget.
Unfortunately, the two main characters in J-ok'el are
played by absolutely worthless actors. George is
played by Tom Parker, an American actor who's had some
minor roles in low-budget movies and TV-series before.
Why they decided to hire him is just beyond me as he
only gives one expression throughout the entire movie
and is as stiff as a corpse. Carmen is played by
Mexican actress Ana Patricia Rojo who is forced to
deliver all of her lines in English despite the fact
that she's obviously not very used to speaking English.
There's not a whole lot of horror to be found in here
either. We don't get to see the ghost until the very
end of the movie, what we see is a big white sheet
getting thrown around in front of the camera. Scary?
I think not. There weren't even many scenes that
were meant to be scary in this flick. At times it felt
as if they had forgotten that they were making a horror
movie as there's no tension or atmosphere in it at all.
But let's get back to the ending. Oh man. I'm just
speechless. J-ok'el really has hit a new low with this
pathetic twist ending. I can't find words to describe
how terrible the ending was. It's so bad that it's not
even funny - you just feel bad for Dee Wallace.
In the end, I'm quite pleased that J-ok'el flopped at
the box-office and I urge you to stay away from this
movie as it's not even considered a horror flick by
me. It's a tedious drama about how criminal and lazy
Mexicans are. It's not even a movie made by Mexicans,
almost every single person behind this film was American
so if they were going to shoot it in English anyway,
why would they market it as a Mexican horror flick?
Send this low-rent piece of crap straight to DVD.
No.
Way too good for the movie, I'm sure that the orchestra
behind this soundtrack has some great things in front
of them so let's not blame them for being involved in
this dreadfully boring movie.
I've seen three Mexican horror flicks this year. First
there was Kilometro 31 which was somewhat decent, then
there was Caņitas which was a poor Amityville knock-off
and then there's J-ok'el which isn't horror at all.
There just happens to be a white sheet flying in front
of the camera every now and then. Avoid. Ugh!
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