[Film Review] Jamie Marks Is Dead (2014)

Carter Smith’s 2014 film Jamie Marks Is Dead is an understated character piece, exploring teen relationships, small-town prejudice and the after-effects of tragedy on individuals and a small-town community. 

When teenager Jamie Marks (Noah SIlver) is found dead in a creek outside his hometown, his classmate Adam McCormick (Cameron Monaghan) finds himself drawn to Jamie - his life, the mystery of his death, and his seemingly continued presence in the town. Adam begins a relationship with Gracie (Morgan Saylor), the girl who found Jamie’s body, as they both contend with the effect of Jamie’s death. Adam and Jamie’s existences become further entwined when Jamie’s ghost appears to him, and Adam learns more about the person Jamie was, and who he continues to be in death.

Adam himself is struggling at home with both his bullying older brother and the shock of his mother’s recent car accident, which has left her with life-changing injuries. His relationship with Jamie provides both a contrast and an escape from these troubles. Through these new connections he has to reassess his relationships with the people in his life and with the history of his home.

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Teen deaths are often presented in film and TV as moments of profound reckoning for communities - for instance the devastating effects on the community of Laura Palmer’s death in Twin Peaks. By contrast, Jamie Marks’ demise is treated as largely inconsequential by the town - when a student asks a teacher whether they should talk about what has happened, he responds with a sense of exasperated disbelief that any of them really care about the fate of “Moody Marks”. 

The coldness of the town’s reaction to Jamie’s death only spurs Adam to feel closer to his late classmate. As Adam’s relationship with Jamie develops, the film becomes not only a ghost story but a queer love story. There is a sense of guilt in Jamie’s haunting of Adam - in a flashback we see Adam passively witnessing vicious homophobic bullying of Jamie by some of his teammates, and when they discuss times they’d interacted in life, Adam is only able to offer the slightest of memories. Adam becomes increasingly motivated to empathise with and defend Jamie, eventually going missing from home in his quest to help him.

The young cast are excellent and are supported by strong performances by Liv Tyler and Judy Greer - both playing against type as Adam’s mother as her unreliable friend respectively. Carter Smith creates a grounded and realistic world which also believably includes a supernatural world with its own rules and customs. 

Jamie Marks Is Dead is a melancholy, moving, sombre and yet subtly joyful film. The raw desire of its young protagonists for belonging, intimacy, revenge and friendship are shown to be powerful forces, even when surrounded by both outright attacks and profound apathy.

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