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The time loop formula gets a psychological thriller twist with Jagged Mind. The movie revolves around the manager of an art gallery who begins suffering blackouts and horrific visions after dating a mysterious new woman and learns her new partner may not be as loving as she thought.
Maisie Richardson-Sellers leads the cast of Jagged Mind alongside Shannon Woodward, Rosaline Elbay, Kate Szekely, Jimmy Jean-Louis, Benjamin Valenzuela, Brandi Huzzi, and Loren Swan. Providing new takes on the time loop story and the depiction of voodoo, Jagged Mind is packed full of twists. The psychological thriller also offers plenty of insightful commentary and cultural representation while keeping audiences guessing.
In anticipation of the movie’s premiere, Screen Rant spoke exclusively with director Kelley Kali for Jagged Mind, how she thought she’d lose the job with her pitch, making changes to the original short film, and more.
Kelley Kali on Jagged Mind
Screen Rant: I watched Jagged Mind last night, and it was great. It was tense, it was stylish. What about Allison’s short film and the story really sparked your interest to want to get in the director’s chair for it?
Kelley Kali: Thank you for taking the time to watch it. So, my other feature, I’m Fine (Thanks For Asking) had won at South by Southwest, and that got the attention of 20th Digital. I was able to come in and pitch for the feature version of what was once called First Date, so I didn’t watch the short, I didn’t want to because I didn’t want it to affect how I saw the feature being. Grant, I didn’t think I was gonna get the job [chuckles], because I went in there changing everything. First, it took place in New York, in Manhattan, and it was a Manhattan art gallery.
We know what’s in the Manhattan art galleries, it’s a whole bunch of white art, like, we’ve seen it, we’ve seen it. We might not have seen the two girls before, but we’ve seen [the rest], it wasn’t new to me. Then, the script read as two white women, so I had said, “Well, what if we made the lead African-American, Afro-Caribbean or something?” Mainly also pulling on my background, because I come from an interracial family, and what I liked about that was that I remember my parents going out, walking around, and no one was aggressive towards them. But you would definitely get those looks like, “Oh, they’re together? Okay”.
So, that added this layer of tension to the couple in the story, amongst all the other drama that they have. What I didn’t know is that it was an interracial couple in the short, so me and Allyson were already on the same page. Then, the other thing that I came with was I didn’t think it should take place in New York. I was like, “Look, there’s magic in this movie, we should place it in a place that believes in magic, to make it feel grounded, to make it feel like maybe this can happen, maybe someone can time loop somebody.” So I said, “Let’s put it in New Orleans,” and the team loved it, so I got the job.
Then, for logistical reasons, Miami got brought up, and I said, “Okay, well, if we go to Miami, then we need to put it in Little Haiti.” I’d spent over a decade going back and forth to Haiti, my background’s in anthropology in film, so I was studying children rights and living conditions, and I also shot films there. So, I said, “We need to respect the culture. Because there’s magic, people are automatically going to think voodoo, we need to add another character that is Haitian.” Then, we turned the character Rose Haitian, so that those characters can help our protagonist, and so that the voodoo that is in the movie is not evil, like so many movies depicted. It’s good, and it’s helping to warn our protagonist, because voodoo is a religion, it’s to be respected like all other religions, but it’s been used as a gimmick for so long.
I wanted to make sure that we were careful of that, and that the stone’s magic is something else, some other magic, and that these characters are helping the protagonists to warn her about what this other magic is doing to her. So we brought in Jimmy Jean-Louis, and he played the character that we added, and we got to have Haitian Creole in it, which was very important to me, to pay homage to the Haitian community, and didn’t subtitle it, so that it’s like it’s for them. I mean, you still understand the scene, but we took great thought into how we portrayed a certain culture, because I really care about depicting marginalized communities in every film that I do in as best of away as I possibly can.
With putting so much of yourself into the lead, what was it like looking for the perfect person to basically play yourself for this film?
Kelley Kali: So, another thing that I liked about working with 20th Digital and Hulu, with the executives there, was that I didn’t have to push to make sure we cast actors from the LGBTQ+ community, they automatically were all about it. They had a list and all that, and I was like, “Okay, we’re all on the same page!” [Chuckles] So, when we came across Shannon and Maisie, they were perfect. Shannon brought this realness to it, but this eerieness as well. Her and Maisie were walking the lines of their characters. Shannon felt like a real person, real everyday person that could flip if she needed to, she was really walking the line in a way that I love, because Alex is my favorite character.
I know that seems weird, but she is, because to me, when I’m directing, there are no villains, they are people. They might be hurt people or whatever it is, but I never look at a character as a villain. And that’s how Shannon approached it, she never saw her that way either. She’s just somebody who loves somebody very much, and is just trying to get it right. Now, maybe not in the most healthy of ways. [Laughs] But her intentions, you know, kinda are pure in her own mind. And then Maisie, first of all, she’s British, okay, and the way she slaps on that American accent, I would just forget half the time that she’s not American.
She’d come and ask for notes and I’m like, “Who are you with this?” [Laughs] She’s so talented, and she brings this softness to Billy, and yet this strength. One of the things that I loved that she did so subtly — because you can easily overact being looped — I could look at the monitor, and her face wouldn’t change, but her eyes shifted. I always knew when she’s choosing to be looped in that moment, I could see that subtle shift, that is just great acting, that is skill. Her and Shannon are so skilled, and we were just so blessed to have the two of them lead this film, I loved working with them.
About Jagged Mind
When Billie starts dating a mysterious new girlfriend, she suffers blackouts and strange visions that feel like she’s living the same moments of her life over and over.
Jagged Mind begins streaming on Hulu on June 15.
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