Jimmy

Jimmy is a new horror film directed by David-Jan Bronsgeest. After directing short films and several TV episodes of various TV series, this is his film directorial debut.

After Dilara (Sonia Eijken) her friend is murdered, she decides to return to her hometown. Here she has a reunion with her group of friends and learns about the dark true-crime podcast. When you listen to this podcast, you can hear the voice of the village idiot Jimmy (Rick Paul van Mulligen), but the longer you keep listening to it, the greater the chance that you will be murdered.

Besides the fact that this film is the director's directorial debut, it is also the first film that scriptwriter Tim Koomen has written. The fact that both are still somewhat inexperienced and on the starting side is reflected in the final film that they have made. They seem to have copied many elements and ideas from other, well-known horror films and then mixed them together. This film lacks originality or creativity and only reminds us of the well-known films it copies. So you can actually better watch these films yourself instead of a bad copy.

The details are also not always well worked out and sometimes come across as a bit vague. The characters do speak in the way that modern youth does. They also use smartphones and airpods, but strangely enough they also film things with old home video cameras, which makes you wonder why they don't just film with their smartphones.

The characters also often commit horror clichés such as only going after strange sounds in the dark, which also makes you not really care about the characters. A more experienced director and writer could have guided the cast members better with how they should react to things, but this doesn't really seem to have been thought of either.

Jimmy is a compelling Dutch horror film that showcases impressive performances, particularly from the leading ladies. Their acting is strong and truly elevates the film. The jump scares are well-executed, adding to the overall tension without feeling forced.

From a technical standpoint, the film excels with beautiful camera work and thoughtful choices that enhance the storytelling. The lead actor portraying Jim is strong as well, but I felt there could have been more dialogue for him. At times, I struggled to hear the lines clearly, which led to moments where I didn't fully understand the scenes and was briefly taken out of the film.

Overall, Jimmy is a well-crafted horror film with strong performances and technical excellence, though clearer dialogue would have made it even more engaging.

This movie really shows an edge side of the Dutch film industry. Scary, raw and definitely entertaining, just like the good old teenage horror days. We need more movies like this!!

Great performances by Rick Paul as Jimmy, and the rest of the cast really embodies their specific characters.

Camera work is top notch. What also stands out is the lighting and mood setting of the movie.

Without spoiling, the plot twist halfway through he movie os highly unexpected, especially in this horror niche. All in all, entertaining and refreshing, good acting and cinematography that stands out, especially for a Dutch movie.

It's basically just a low quality 'group of annoying and pretty horrible adolescents get killed off'-movie, but this one goes the extra mile in being low quality and the characters being bad.

First the good:

The lighting is at times completely nonsensical but the colors are very reminiscent of Euphoria and (later) Suspiria. Besides the fact that it doesn't make sense for people inside of a car to be lit by a dashboard in several neon colors as if they're in front of a big neon sign, it does look pretty.

The audio is done well. All of the dialoge (I'm Dutch but I sometimes struggle making badly mixed dialogue out) is very understandable and well mixed. The audio fx aren't too loud, the music is decent. This is the movie's strongest suit.

It wasn't boring. That's not a lot but for a movie of this caliber it saves it from getting a lower rating.

Now, the bad:

The main characters are incredibly unbelievable. Not only because of the acting, but also because they have 0 personality and I bet a group of psychopaths would be more fun to hang out with. They're also incredibly interchangeable because of this. One has the trait of being worse than the rest, one has the trait of... being a mom? The rest I really couldn't tell apart had they looked alike as well.

The plot is just terrible. Almost nothing makes sense. The supernatural parts don't make sense (not even in universe), why the characters do most of what they do doesn't make sense, the timeline of events doesn't make sense, even the pacing doesn't make sense. Not to get into spoiler territory I will only dive shortly into the last one: Normally in these 'group gets killed off' kind of horror movies part of the horror, part of what's supposed to build dread, is that they KNOW they're being killed off one by one. Here, they simply don't and as a viewer you're missing out on the usual layer of fear these movies hope to accomplish. I'm not complaining that the plot is cliche, I'm complaining that the cliche is done badly.

Then there is the acting. It wasn't believable. It didn't look like they phoned it in, it looks like they tried, but not one actor shows a range wider (or deeper) than sad - angry - laughing (and several only showed 2 out of the 3). It might have been the direction, that's hard to tell, but every change in tone/emotion was jarring and when they stuck to one it felt too one-note. Isa Hoes was over the top campy, which was at least fun but didn't fit the rest of the movie at all.

It's fairly obvious the writer and director at least like horror movies but I was left wondering if they had any idea at all what made the horrors they liked work in the first place.

3/10, would only recommend if you like watching bad movies ironically (I had a couple of unintended laughs).