The most resonant aspect of Bence Fliegauf’s daring horror hybrid, premiering at Karlovy Vary in the Crystal Globe Competition, might well be its title. Jimmy Jaguar sounds like the hero of an old cartoon series or a character in a creepy nursery rhyme. And indeed, both these associations hint at the sinister nature of the titular demon. However, the uncanny force at the dark hearth of the Hungarian director’s twisted fake-documentary is much more complex. The stark scenario opens with hyper-realistic interrogation-room footage. A young mechanic and his eccentric accomplice are accused of murdering an old recluse. Their case proves a steady descent into evil, its allure, power, and human disguises.
Robert “Seed” Kiss (Erik Major giving off instant serial killer vibes) and Marci Balfi (Krisztián Peer) bound the old man in ritualistic fashion and sent his body down a stream in a boat. It’s a bizarre, seemingly senseless act of arbitrary violence to which a demon called Jimmy Jaguar or “Jagu” incited them. Their claim sounds like a ploy to plead insanity or even an actual symptom of such – if there wasn’t a disturbing hidden side to the case. The unsuspecting old man was a Serbian war criminal who raped and murdered hundreds of women, sending their bound bodies in boats down a river. For years he hid out in Hungary, leading a relatively content life.
A fake documentary crew investigating the unsettling case serves as a dramatic focal point. Though the kidnappers claim they had no idea who the old man was, the documentarian – only audible as a background voice relating their story – believes in an act of vigilantism. This would make the murderous duo opportunistic killers, similar to their victim: secret sadists only waiting for a moral loophole to unleash their urge. A slow-burning collage of interviews, lo-fi recordings, and testimonial fragments gradually unveils that Jagu, invoked by his devotees with a scribbled symbol of a one-eyed cat, is not a supernatural entity but a psychic contagion. States of shared madness, like folie à deux or the dancing plague, transmitted by narratives.
This pathology is personified by a chorus of Jagu believers whom the film team encounters. A pregnant young woman (Juli Jakab), a cult leader (Nóra Jakab) and two twenty-somethings (Alíz Sólyom, Lilla Kizlinger) claiming their kennel of cats and dogs are possessed. Such moments add a macabre comedy to the blend of true-crime procedural, ethnographic drama, and psychological thriller, probing the nature of collective delusion. The haunted imagery unfolds like a cinematic urban legend, unflinching, ominous, crude, and eerily possible. Through fragmented narratives, the entity morphs into a weird social meme. The visuals meld bleak austerity with raw immediacy. Cinematographer Mátyás Gyuricza captures static, medium-frame interviews and handheld found footage that forge an unsettling realism.
Deliberately flat-paced, the story relies less on momentum than on mood. Behind the captivating lore and psychopathological obsession lies a profoundly human yearning for justice within a corrupt system. A sparse score, co-composed by Fliegauf and Tamás Beke, emphasises droning ambient textures. Fliegauf’s deliberate subversion of sensationalist genre tropes, refusing to provide comfort or aesthetic thrills. As an existentialist psycho horror, his narrative finds its demon inside pitifully mundane individuals, embodying a collective surrender to myth, apathy, and violent memory.
- OT: Jimmy Jaguar
- Director: Bence Fliegauf
- Year: 2025
