Jimmy and Judy (2006)

Directed by: Randall Rubin, Jon Schroder | 99 minutes | action, drama | Actors: Edward Furlong, Rachael Bella, William Sadler, James Eckhouse, Gay Storm, Chaney Kley, AJ Buckley, Jane Leigh Connelly, Nicole Randall Johnson, Patrick Bristow, Lindsay Beamish, Denver Jade, Crystal Wilson, Rob Wilds, Michael Friedman

‘Jimmy and Judy’ is an uncomfortable movie to watch. Not because he’s so confrontational, but because he seems messy. Hand-held images always require some patience from the viewer, but unlike similar films like ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Cloverfield’, this stylistic device in ‘Jimmy and Judy’ doesn’t add much. The restless, supposedly authentic video images do not involve you in the story, but rather create distance: you see the characters making love and killing, but it all remains strangely two-dimensional, as if the scenes float by in a bubble. When the bubble finally bursts, shrug. The characters have to bear their suffering alone, as a viewer you have already given up.

Edward Furlong probably didn’t have to dig deep to shape his character. After ‘American History X’ things quickly went downhill for the actor and it shows. A pale face, bags under the eyes, a layer of bacon on the ribs, for Furlong it is extremely sad but for a unstable young man like Jimmy they are not bad accessories. The choice for Rachael Bella is less fortunate. It’s hard to believe that this gorgeous girl is the school’s piss-pole and so easily involved in Jimmy’s murders. Furlong accepts you with one look in his drowsy eyes, Bella has to act too hard to achieve the same authenticity and for a film that relies on realism that is a big flaw.

Despite the necessary brutal scenes (Jimmy and Judy burn the corpse of a bum they hit, Jimmy grabs a stick and bored bored into the searing flesh of the man’s face) the film makes little impression. You watch escalating violence without it becoming clear what the directors intended to say. Jimmy does philosophize about it, but his monologues are no more than blanks, the babbling of a kid who doesn’t track and has knocked back too many illegal substances. The ending of the story can be guessed. Not that it matters, the characters are not charismatic enough for that. As a killer film duo, Jimmy and Judy lose out to Mickey and Mallory. So it looks like the ‘Natural Born Killers’ for the YouTube generation has yet to be made.