Daily Show power couple Jason Jones and Samantha Bee star alongside fellow vets of Toronto’s comedy scene — including Mike Beaver, Jones’ former partner in sketch group The Bobroom — in this retro-’80s black comedy about a Christmas family gathering that turns decidedly toxic.

With all of the action being purportedly captured on a second-hand VHS camcorder, the Coopers spend the holiday doing their utmost to ruin each other’s lives. As the warfare intensifies, events turn less funny-ha-ha and more cruel and grotesque. Indeed, there seems to be a heated battle among the relatives to determine who rates as the sickest, most pathetic creep of them all. (Uncle Nick, played with much mock-drunken aplomb by Beaver, emerges as the early favourite when he tumbles into the Christmas tree.)

Consequently, this desecration of middle-class values — which wouldn’t be complete without amateur porn clips featuring Dave Foley — sometimes exhibits the subtlety of a steamroller as it barrels through gags both inspired and obvious. But as in Ham & Cheese — the too-little-seen 2004 effort by Jones and Beaver with director Warren Sonoda — it’s still exciting to see some of our best local comics go for broke.