I had a plan for January 2022. It wasn’t good, but there was one. The idea was to watch as many movies by Mr. Ulli Lommel–a man I regard as the worst filmmaker I’ve ever seen, as I touched upon in Diary of a Cannibal–until my soul couldn’t take any more or the month ended, whichever happened first. But that’s being postponed for something else. Why bring this up? I was going to end December on some absolute garbage movies to get myself in the right headspace for the following month. For better or worse, that’s the part of the plan that stuck. So let’s talk about Bahum Bug, which is as ugly as it is bad.

The titular Bahum Bug is a talking cockroach that hates Christmas and wants to ruin it for everyone. After an attempt to buy the holiday outright from Santa doesn’t work, he steals the “Naughty & Nice” list with the intent to give coal to good kids and presents to bad kids. A ghost turkey–for a second there I had PTSD flashbacks to ThanksKilling 3–warns him that he will be visited by other… spirits? Ghosts? It’s a pixie and a talking tree. The pixie shows him a Christmas past, while the tree shows his unfortunate end. Bahum Bug repents, but the tree tells him that it’s too late to change his heart and everyone will hate him forever. A bit dark for a kids movie, but the bug tries being good anyway, sharing his newfound Christmas spirit. But probably not for too long since there’s a sequel.

Then there’s the pointless side characters. A reindeer finds Baby New Year and watches over him, while another reindeer and a bear travel to the Cave of the Crystal Snowflakes. None of these plots goes anywhere and they’re just to pad out the runtime.

This movie’s bad, y’all. It’s ugly as sin, which actually surprised me. See, the poster on IMDB shows a bug, but that’s not the animation style so I have no idea where that came from. Everyone has dead eyes fixed onto a frozen expressions, like they’re all haunted dolls. Bahum Bug does emote once to look sad, but that’s it. If someone is smirking, they smirk for the entire film. None of the audio is matched up to the visuals, either, so everyone is just gnashing their teeth as they talk.

And then there’s the voice acting. Most of the actors tried to give the roles everything they had, which could’ve worked if they had any direction or skill. The worst offender is one of Santa’s elves who just… it’s like a nerd voice, but… wetter. I don’t know how else to describe it. Should you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of watching this on Tubi, you may go, “Huh, yeah, that was pretty close.” I mean, ideally you’ll never subject yourself to this, but 2021 has been all about disappointments.

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