It takes a long time for Jagged Mind protagonist Billy (Legends of Tomorrow's Maisie Richardson-Sellers) to discover the ill intentions her new girlfriend Alex (Westworld's Shannon Woodward) is hiding from her, but the audience gets there much quicker. In a way, Jagged Mind's opening disclaimer about depictions of intimate partner violence functions as a spoiler, making Alex's first appearance even more menacing than the movie's generally ominous tone indicates. That kind of blunt, obvious storytelling holds Jagged Mind back from being truly scary or affecting, but the film does have some strong, sporadic moments.
From the beginning, something seems to be wrong with Billy's perception of time. She's concerned about possibly inheriting the early-onset dementia that plagued her mother, and she experiences episodes of déjà vu and missing time. She goes for a run around her Miami neighborhood of Little Haiti, stops in the middle of the street, and suddenly blips herself to nighttime in a bar alone. That's where she meets Alex, who suavely sends a glass of wine over to Billy and then joins her. Billy gets the sense that she's met Alex before, but maybe that's just a sign of romantic connection. When Billy is called away to an opening at the art gallery where she works, Alex casually says, "See you next time."
There are moments where it seems as though Jagged Mind might become a time-loop story of two people caught in their first romantic meeting, like fellow Hulu original movie Palm Springs or the underrated Meet Cute, but after a few instances of their initial encounter, Billy and Alex seemingly get things right. Billy invites Alex to tag along to her work event, where her co-worker and ex-girlfriend Christine (Rosaline Elbay) is mysteriously missing this time. Alex and Billy fall for each other quickly, and instead of a single evening repeating itself, Jagged Mind shifts into a montage of months passing by.
The skewed passage of time continues to be a theme as Jagged Mind progresses and Billy's blackouts get more frequent. Alex seems controlling and possessive, but that could just be an expression of her concern, or Billy's confused understanding of what's happening around her. Director Kelley Kali shows enough of Alex's apparent outbursts of anger and insults to convey the sense that she's dangerous, but every time there's an abusive incident, time loops back to the same moment, with Alex behaving perfectly nicely and rationally.
Of course, Alex isn't actually nice or rational, and Woodward expertly expresses the rage just underneath her calm facade. Even without the eventual supernatural elements, Jagged Mind could be a solid, small-scale drama about an abusive relationship, in a queer context that doesn't get enough acknowledgment or representation in movies. That's not what Jagged Mind is really about, though, and the hints at what Alex is doing to Billy, beyond familiar domestic abuse, derail most of Jagged Mind's emotional power.
Writer Allyson Morgan expanded Jagged Mind from an episode she wrote of Hulu's Bite Size Halloween anthology series, and the transition from a four-minute short to a nearly 90-minute feature is a bit bumpy. That's especially evident in Jagged Mind's final act, when Billy catches on to what Alex is doing to her. The supernatural explanation is filled with thinly sketched horror-movie clichés, and it seems to undermine some of the themes about abusive relationships and gaslighting.
Still, Kali is good at creating an atmosphere of dread and mistrust, and the constant time shifts keep both Billy and the audience on their toes. The Little Haiti neighborhood is a unique location that hasn't been overused in horror movies, and the characters feel real beyond just their place in a stock supernatural story. Richardson-Sellers is likable as Billy, although Woodward is more fascinating to watch, making Alex into a devious yet stylish villain.
Jagged Mind is the fourth small-scale horror movie produced for Hulu by the now-defunct 20th Digital Studio, all of which have been released with little fanfare. Like previous Hulu and 20th Digital Studio releases Matriarch and Clock, Jagged Mind puts a horror spin on common issues that women face, taking seriously the kind of topic that might be dismissed or ignored in other genre films. It's not as successful as the gloriously weird and gross Matriarch or the intense and unsettling Clock, but it's an admirable effort that falls short mainly by trying to take on too much. By the end, Jagged Mind has given in to genre conventions, but for a little while, it's intriguingly thoughtful and ambitious.
Jagged Mind premieres Thursday, June 15, on Hulu.