JIMMY AND STIGGS - Mark Reviews Movies

Jimmy and Stiggs, Iconic Events

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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 14, 2025

Jimmy, played by writer/director Joe Begos, is a frustrated filmmaker, who receives some bad news at the start of Jimmy and Stiggs. His latest project has fallen through, leaving him with nothing to do and with a desire to just stay in for the night. That's when aliens show up in his cramped apartment.

There are some things to note right away. This is a small movie, set entirely in an apartment that may or may not be filmmaker's own. Its narrative ambitions are equally small, since the setting and the setup don't demand or really offer much. Jimmy is apparently abducted by those aliens, during the first-person-perspective shots that open the story, and awakens convinced that they have implanted something into his face. Is it real, or is it just the joint he smokes and cocaine he snorts before the incident playing tricks on his mind?

That question might have been a fun way for Begos to toy with us, but in addition to making on-the-quick and on-the-cheap little movies, the filmmaker also focuses on gimmicky genre fare. If there are aliens in this story, you can be certain, in other words, that Begos isn't particularly interested in whether or not those little gray men are real or imaginary. These aliens are as real as they need to be, which, in this case, means they can be tossed around the apartment, have their limbs hacked off, and receive a skull-opening bludgeoning with anything that Jimmy and, soon enough, his estranged friend can find.

With that in mind, the question then becomes whether or not Begos can maintain this simple premise for even 80 minutes or so. That doesn't seem like a lot of time in the realm of a feature movie, but in the case of one that possesses very little other than scenes of phony-looking aliens being dismembered and beaten and stabbed and shot, that time feels much longer than it is.

The movie definitely has little interest in its characters, as those opening POV shots show immediately. It's an interesting idea, to be sure, as a way to put us inside the mind and experience of Jimmy, as his evening of professional failure shifts into that inexplicable encounter with something. There are tremors, seemingly isolated to his apartment, and he starts to feel ill, collapsing to the floor and vomiting. Without any view of the character, though, we're not exactly getting a sense of Jimmy or a way to sympathize with what's happening to him. The sequence becomes more of a ride, especially when Jimmy's view levitates to the ceiling, getting quite close to the spinning blades of the ceiling fan in his bedroom.

That subjective camera returns in the movie's climax, and watching it brings another experience to mind. It's that of going through an amusement park-style haunted house, with its eerily-hued illumination and flashing lights and actors popping out from openings or around corners. When the camera leaves Jimmy's perspective and starts observing him, there are moments like that, too, as he's convinced aliens are everywhere in his apartment, just waiting to suddenly enter a room or poke their head around a doorway.

Above all else, an experience like that requires some sense of surprise to succeed. Once it becomes clear that Begos is mainly interested in bashing and slashing his alien characters in different ways, any sense of surprise pretty much disappears from the movie.

The introduction of Jimmy's friend Stiggs (Matt Mercer) doesn't change much, either. The two men used to really close, drinking and doing drugs regularly, but Stiggs has been sober for six months and has kept away from old buddy in order to resist any additional temptation. Jimmy calls him about the aliens, because the two have been curious about alien abductions since childhood. Soon enough, Stiggs gets in on the beating and slicing of aliens, whose severed limbs spray fountains of orange blood. Their cracked-open heads are shockingly hollow for an intergalactic species that has perfected space travel, can manifest a brick wall in front of Jimmy's front door, and have the ability to levitate.

To be fair, the movie isn't trying to do much more offer over-the-top alien—and occasionally human—gore within the confines of a boldly lit space (Cinematographers Brian Sowell and Mike Testin keep the color palette dynamic, at least). Just because Jimmy and Stiggs isn't attempting much, however, doesn't mean that it accomplishes that meager goal, either.

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