By Lea Vazquez and Montana Woods
On February 8, the Santa Barbara International Film Festival (SBIFF) held the world premiere of Spider & Jessie at the Riviera Theatre. A full feature debut from director Daniel Kay, Spider & Jessie follows two sisters after they discover their mother dead from an overdose; fearful of joining the foster system, Spider (played by Mckenna Grace) and Jessie (played by Jojo Regina) work to cover the passing of their mother in order to stay together.
The 320-person theater was rather packed, filled with both audience members and those who worked on the film. Before Spider & Jessie began, Kay came to the front of the theater to thank everyone who came to watch the film. Throughout the 102-minute run time, the audience gasped, laughed, and sighed in reaction to the plot—particularly in moments that featured Regina, who delivered a fierce performance for her age.
After the end credits rolled, Kay returned to the front of the stage with Regina and other cast members for a Q&A, including Forrest Goodluck, Fernanda Andrade, Malia Baker, and Jesse Williams (who is also an executive producer). You can tell this first feature by Kay is a labor of love. Before taking questions, he asked for everyone who worked on the film to stand; resulting in around 15 people in the crowd arising to be recognized for their work.
Kay began to describe the inspiration behind the film. Initially inspired by an article he read in the Chicago Tribune about children of drug addicts, Kay began to take interest in the collateral damage of drug addiction. With the help of Pulitzer prize feature writer Julia Keller, Kay conducted research throughout the midwest in order to create a realistic depiction of children of drug addicts.
Willaims also commented on the research lent to creating an authentic film, “Dan and the team created a really authentic, well researched safe space that allowed for us to play and figure some things out and collaborate and just listen. As fast as we had to shoot, as hard as it fits to make films, we still managed to create a space where we could be patient and quiet and play and figure some things out. And I think it came through on screen,” he said.
Kay was also asked what he hoped the audience would take away from the film, to which he responded, “This subject matter is by its very nature depressing, but that’s not the feel that I wanted the film to have. I wanted to leave the theater with a sense of hope.”
He added that he hopes this film allows people to embrace families that suffer from addiction, helping to put an end to the systematic epidemic of addiction.
While Spider & Jessie had heart, it lacked soul. There is charm in which Kay attempts to embrace in his film, and alongside the genuine care the he and the cast members had for his film—respect is deserved for his directorial debut.
Grace and Regina knocked the rest of the cast out of the ballpark with their performances, especially given the nature of the topic the film explores. Their bond felt genuine, but beyond their acting, the film felt rather flat.
Nothing in the film is given the appropriate amount of time to be fully explored; other relationships in the film feel surface level, with many intersections not feeling fleshed out enough. While Kay holds Spider and Jessie close to his heart, he never allows the audience the opportunity to grow close to the girls in the way he wanted, often focusing on unimportant subplots and giving more time to side characters than is really necessary.
Despite the opposition to the girls being entering the foster care system, the audience is never given any closure of what fate the girls meet. Bluntly speaking here, I didn’t care. Unfortunately, a good portion of the movie consists of scenery shots that don’t provide anything to the plot, cutting away at time that could’ve been used to explore the relationship the girls had with other characters in the film.
By all means “Spider & Jessie” is a heartfelt watch about rural American families, a community often portrayed through stereotypes. This story is less about loss and more about these familial ties and the grounding of communities, but we aren’t given time to connect to those in the community at all. Though weakened by its uneven pacing and surface-level relationships, audiences are pulled in through the masterful performances of Grace and Regina, whose chemistry elevates even the most melodramatic scenes, grounding the story in genuine emotion. Like the recurring song in the movie “Itsy Bitsy Spider”, one can only hope that Kay learns from the film’s structural missteps, picks himself up, and climbs up the spout of creating his second film. Given the sensitivity he’s shown in capturing the dignity and complexity of children of drug addicts, there’s every reason to believe his next effort will soar even higher.