[Film Review] Jakob’s Wife (2021)

Anne Fedder (Barbara Crampton) simmers in a pew, quietly disdainful of her husband. When Reverend Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden) proselytizes, “He who loves his wife loves himself,” it reeks of hypocrisy. In private, Jakob speaks over Anne. His snores keep her awake at night. She’s been making his breakfast for decades without gratitude. So when one of Jakob’s parish attendees Amelia (Nyisha Bell) goes missing and an old flame returns to town, Anne is ready to take a bite out of life. Only, she can’t go through with it. She needs a little help from a watchful vampire who sympathizes. Bloodthirsty and more alive than ever, Anne discovers that she adores her new sense of self. Meanwhile, locals continue to be mysteriously picked off and Anne must decide with whom her loyalties lie: her husband or her new vampiric master.

Jakob’s Wife is a film many years in the making, one that producer and star Barbara Crampton fought hard for. But you could say it started even earlier. Crampton had been largely absent from film for many years; by the mid-1990s, her acting opportunities dwindled and then after her marriage, Crampton set aside acting to focus on raising her children. In 2011, the cult horror hit You’re Next revitalized her career. She has since rededicated herself to the genre. It’s hard not to read Crampton into Anne’s story: as Anne explains, “You make plans for things and then life happens, I guess.” But, like with the film’s heroine, Crampton’s second life in horror is a remarkable one that looks forward as much as it utilizes the best of the past. While its showcase of horror icons from its stars to Bonnie Aarons (The Nun, The Conjuring 2) and Robert Rusler (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2, Vamp), bold sexuality, and spectacular moments of gore call back to the low-budget glory days of the 1980s, its feminist thrust elevates Jakob’s Wife beyond a nostalgic rendezvous. 

The sermon that opens the film—Jakob’s recitation of Ephesians, which demands that husbands love their wives “that he might sanctify her” to “present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing. That she might be holy and without blemish”—establishes the world in which Anne lives. God creates woman. Woman brings sin to the world. Man cleanses woman of sin. You don’t have to attend Sunday School to get the message; it’s pervasive within Western culture. Though Jakob’s hypocrisy is undeniable ("You don't know how to fight for me because you've never done it!” accuses Anne), it is also clear that he views Anne as a reflection of himself and his duties as a husband. His failure to protect Anne manifests as his insistence that she should be ashamed of herself. “You had sin in your heart,” he says to her, “and you brought this on yourself.” 

Jakob’s Wife, however, refrains from a trite regurgitation of the battle of the sexes. While its criticism of patriarchy on both institutional and personal levels cannot be missed, the film’s success lies in its ability to hold its negotiations in play. Anne and Jakob maintain fundamentally different viewpoints, but they also genuinely love each other. The fraught space Anne finds herself in is exacerbated by the film’s refrain, “Who are you? What do you want?”

Bonnie Aarons’s delicious portrayal of the Nosferatu-esque Master strikes the film’s feminism home. In a stunning moment, the Master asks Anne, “Were you ever really you?” The film’s ultimate conviction that Anne must decide for herself what she wants from life cannot be reduced to choosing sides: it’s not about her husband or the Master; it’s about Anne and her choices. Jakob’s Wife doesn’t shy away from the gruesome or taboo either despite its framework as a marriage drama. Rats follow the Master like the Pied Piper, recalling some of the earliest and most grotesque depictions of the vampire. And when Anne fingers the holes in her neck and masturbates at her window, the film demands that its viewers acknowledge her sexuality. It’s not often that a woman of Anne’s age is given the freedom to reinvent herself on screen; it’s even less common in vampire flicks whose stars are often teens and twenty-somethings. In Jakob’s Wife, female self-discovery can come at any time. It’s as delightful and charged as in one’s youth. The film’s take on the vampire is at once fresh and reflective, persuasive while resisting easy answers—and it’s bloody good fun.

You can watch and read Marisa’s exclusive interview with none other than Barbara Crampton herself too!

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