Jakob's Wife

Churches that focus on couples and families while excluding single people is a pet peeve of mine. I’ve seen church signs that advertise themselves as a “family church” -- which is fine if everyone is welcomed as a part of a church family, but often churches mean they focus their ministries on a target group: a father and mother and an average of 2. 5 school-aged children. You can look at church programming with marriage seminars and youth summer camps and family fun nights and wonder, “Would a single person (as in, not in a relationship) feel at home here?” (And quickly answer, “NO!”) From what we see of Pastor Jakob Fedder of the Embrace Eternity Church in the pulpit, he seems to preach almost exclusively about marriage. We first see him preaching from Ephesians 5, the text exhorting husbands to love their wives as Christ loved the Church. This is a very important portion of Scripture and should be preached, but it should be preached carefully to show how the themes of love, mutual submission, and Christ’s love for the Church apply to everyone and not just married people. That’s not the way Jakob preaches it. With all of his sermons about marriage, he seems to be working out his frustrations, hopes, and dreams about his own marriage. (Yes, personal experience will influence one’s teaching and preaching but it shouldn't be the dominant influence. ) When a young woman named Amelia (Nyisha Bell) tells the pastor after the service, “I wish I had a husband. One who loved me like that,” Jakob assures her she’ll get a husband someday -- rather than encouraging her to find satisfaction apart from a husband, perhaps, say, in her relationship with Jesus. This exclusive interest in married ministry is the kind of thing that would give any Movie Church a low Steeple rating, but it doesn’t really matter so much because Jakob aids and abets murders in the film, which is pretty much an automatic Three Steeple deduction. I suppose I should note that Jakob’s Wife is a vampire film, part of our Halloween Movie Churches Double Feature. The film came out this year with a brief theatrical release, simultaneously with streaming. I appreciated the film’s focus on the marriage of a pastor and his wife and the special pressures on a couple in ministry. And, well, the special pressures that arise when a member of a ministry couple is attacked by a master vampire and turns into a vampire herself. I did have a hard time figuring out the ecclesiastic tradition of Pastor Jakob Fedder (Larry Fessenden). He wears clerical garb of someone in a mainline denomination and yet his teaching on the role of gender roles is of a more fundamentalist mode. He is quite judgmental at times (saying to his brother “How many times do I have to tell you not to use the Lord’s name in vain?”) but he drinks liquor openly like an Episcopalian. Seemed unusual for a pastor in Mississippi. The central conflict in the film is found in Jakob’s relationship with his wife, Anne (Barbara Crampton. ) Anne obviously feels constrained by their relationship and her role as a pastor’s wife. She does seem to have interests outside of the church, chiefly in preventing gentrification as part of their town’s development. (Going by political stereotypes, these do seem like concerns of a mainliner rather than a fundamentalist. ) Of course, the real trouble comes when Anne goes to dinner with an old love interest and considers taking the relationship further. But then they are attacked by a vampire. The man is killed but Anne is turned into a vampire. When Jakob discovers that Anne is killing and feeding on other people, he must decide whether to protect his wife or those she puts in danger. He chooses his wife. As he continues to make choices for her, a much more powerful Anne resents this. A dangerous confrontation is to come. I won’t tell you how this confrontation is resolved, because the film itself leaves a rather ambiguous resolution. I must note that Larry Fessenden and Barbara Crampton are both very entertaining in their roles, but the person who really knocks it out of the park is the “Travel Consultant,” Diana Prince.

Love Barbara crampton

Great movie I really enjoyed it

love this movie

One of the worst movies I’ve ever watched. Kept hoping it would get better but it never did. Skip this one.