So this is one of those movie titles that I’ve seen over and over again, and I think I always just assumed it was the same as April Fool’s Day[1] where Jessica, having died in the opening scenes or else via flashback, would be taking her revenge on her teenage bullies for the rest of the flick. Let me start by saying that Let’s Scare Jessica to Death is decidedly not that movie.

So Jessica is a schizophrenic who has just been released from psychiatric hospital, and now she and her husband have moved out to a farmhouse in the sticks near a small town, I suppose to get away from it all. Only, their house has a squatter as well as a history, and Jessica keeps seeing a girl in white, and the townspeople are creepy, and who is that under the lake? Plus, she keeps hearing voices that do not have her best interests at heart (which is how I know she was a schizophrenic).

The mystery isn’t whether or not we should be worried if Jessica is imagining things. It’s nearly a first person movie, and that is her fear the whole time. As such, it is the central tension in one of the tensest psychological horror movies I’ve ever seen.

Recommended.

[1] Why, you ask, did I for years think April Fool’s Day was about a girl named April? I cannot help you out with that.