Kentucky Derby

Amorous teenage rebellion is one thing. A sociopathic murder spree is another. In Jimmy and Judy, a brash and lurid bender into an Appalachian heart of darkness, first-time filmmakers Randall Rubin and Jon Schroder are less interested in the former than the latter. Their star-crossed lovers are not merely a pair of misfits who cling to each other for comfort against a sea of oppressive conformity, or hypocrisy; one of them is a psychopath.

It's an interesting choice. On the one hand, Jimmy is wild and nervy, strikingly raw, with blazing performances by its leads. The point of view, which begins with Jimmy (Edward Furlong) and expands to include that of Judy (Rachael Bella), is pure suburban teen: righteous anger, idiotic posturing, giddy romanticization. On the other, the film risks tedium. When we meet Jimmy, he's already insane, beyond connection with the audience. From such a remove, his crimes lose meaning and interest, and the movie struggles for significance.

In the opening scenes, Jimmy films his life — at his parents' home; at his therapist's office; at the high school, where he spies on a girl — and we see what he sees. He crashes his parents' cocktail party wearing nothing but a layer of silver paint. He sits in silence, filming his therapist's attempts at wresting control of the session, until the counselor erupts in rage. Later, Jimmy films his own backside as he has sex with a black prostitute and yells "Nigger!" ("I wanted to do the unthinkable," he explains post-coitally.) To put it mildly, Jimmy is a provocateur, and every adult in his limited sphere is caught on his hook.

Judy, the high school girl filmed from afar, falls into a different category. Rather than scorn, she inspires infatuation in Jimmy, perhaps because she's a victim at school. (For reasons we don't learn, other students torment Judy, tossing her backpack, shoving her to the ground, and pouring soda on her head.) After witnessing these acts of violence, Jimmy perpetrates some of his own, punishing Judy's oppressors. A hero is born — in her eyes. We know enough to be afraid.

The romance has a honeymoon (naked grassy romps) and then turns desperate. Distracted at the wheel, Judy kills a pedestrian, and the couple freak. Their ensuing crime spree takes them deeper and deeper into the shadow lands of the Kentucky backwoods, where their attempts to shake the police eventually lead to a spooky commune governed by Uncle Rodney (William Sadler), the film's Kurtz.

Artistically, Jimmy is impressive. Like The Blair Witch Project, which the writer-director team cites as an inspiration, the movie justifies its use of handheld video by turning the camera over to the characters. The conceit is that everything shown was filmed either by Jimmy, an obsessive documentarian, or Judy, who turns the lens back on him. At times, the shots are tangential to the action, as during the car accident, when the camera has been "dropped." Jimmy is behind the car, dealing with the police, while Judy wriggles inside, terrified. We see only her ankle as she whimpers. It's a clever shot, and one of the many ways that Rubin and Schroder keep the gimmick interesting. Still, it is a gimmick, and it calls attention to itself more often than it should.

Pudgy and pasty, with a greasy mop and a row of tic-tac teeth, Furlong couldn't be more convincing. His performance vibrates with naked bravery and free-fall daring. But his character is unreachable. Jimmy is almost 100 percent theater — all acting out, all the time — and his swagger soon ceases to shock or entertain. Instead, we crave softness, or truth, and get little of either. There is one fine moment, early in the film, when Jimmy gets real: "I guess when you have no one to talk to ... no one to listen to you, no one to ask advice, you pretty much have to figure everything out on your own." A bit more of that, especially later in the movie, would have gone a long way.

With so little for the audience to grasp in Jimmy, the film loses energy. Except for his love for Judy, which is juvenile and born of extreme need, Jimmy's character has no arc; Judy's has only a downward spiral. And to what end? What does the picture say, other than that this is what happens when a college-aged sociopath seduces a wounded teenager? It's never clear whether Jimmy's psychosis is meant to indict suburban hypocrisy, or materialism, or cruelty — or simply Jimmy's parents. The one telltale scene (of parental sex, in which Jimmy's father is on the receiving end of a 12-inch dildo) raises more questions than it answers. Are Jimmy's parents meant to symbolize suburbia's twisted underbelly? Is witnessing this display a trauma that incites Jimmy to violence? (But he was already there.) Without answering these questions, the film remains on the surface stylish and bold, but not significant.