Vague Visages’ Weapons Jimmy and Stiggs review contains minor spoilers. Joe Begos’ 2024 movie features himself, Matt Mercer and Riley Dandy. Check out the VV home page for more film criticism, movie reviews and film essays.

Joe Begos is such a prolific filmmaker that the idea of him making a movie in his spare time, while chilling out at home, doesn’t actually seem that wild. Shot on glorious 16mm over four years, Jimmy and Stiggs is the latest gonzo offering from one of the most criminally underrated directors in horror today. Bucking convention, while also creating even more work for himself, Begos stars as the titular Jimmy. When the movie begins, a camera rig is seemingly attached to the protagonist, with the first person POV immediately making the action feel uncomfortably urgent and tactile. Although the focus soon switches to Jimmy, the opening sequence — complete with a terse phone call about the perils of indie filmmaking that’s so piercingly astute it must have come from Begos’ personal experience — is the calmest the movie gets. From that point onwards, Jimmy and Stiggs is a chaotic, ferociously gory and wildly inventive descent into madness that’s tough to shake, even once it’s all over. 

Jimmy and Stiggs’ story loosely surrounds an alien invasion. Through cleverly executed and highly profane, rat-a-tat dialogue, it’s made explicit that Begos’ protagonist is a UFO enthusiast who’s been waiting his whole life to be beamed up into a spaceship. Naturally, when Jimmy’s home is invaded for real, it’s more of a nightmare than he ever could’ve anticipated. Stiggs (fellow indie horror stalwart Matt Mercer), meanwhile, is a childhood friend who’s recently become estranged from Jimmy due to his unabashed love of drugs and alcohol (Stiggs is trying to get sober and put his life back on track). It’s clear that these two have a lot of issues, and they inevitably come to blows over them, but there’s a huge amount of love there too and neither man wants the other to succumb to otherworldly forces.

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The aliens themselves, winningly described by Jimmy as “anchovy, sardine-looking scumbags,” look incredible. They were painstakingly hand-built, alongside the blood rigs and every other impressive practical effect, by Russell FX — who are fast becoming genre icons in their own right. Their otherwise classic design for Jimmy and Stiggs is super scary and has an eerily purple tint to it, thanks to the prevalent blacklight, which gives everything an evocative glow — from jellyfish floating in a tank to the orangey extraterrestrial blood. It’s worth noting that Begos’ home is perhaps the coolest apartment ever committed to celluloid too. Spending 80-odd minutes there is a mind-bending delight. It’s tough to image any daylight ever infecting the place, which is shrouded in darkness, crowded with horror paraphernalia and has comic strips as wallpaper, along with an LED strip lighting in the shape of a coffin and plenty more to feast your eyes upon. Jimmy and Stiggs’ setting suits the uniquely neon-soaked carnage, which is fast becoming Begos’ calling card. 

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Begos’ apartment hardly needs any set dressing, but the production design (also by the writer/director/star) is superb. It’s hugely evocative, especially once things really start going off the rails for Jimmy, whose response to every setback is to simply snort more cocaine, arm himself or glug whiskey straight from the bottle. Begos is a good actor — naturalistic and committed — and he clearly relished the opportunity to simultaneously show off his skills in front of and behind the camera. Jimmy and Stiggs’ dialogue flows so quickly and is loaded with so much casual swearing that it’s obvious this is how the director and his friends speak to each other, which sidesteps any risk of Quentin Tarantino-esque try-hard displays of intellectual superiority. Begos is surprisingly soft spoken, despite being a metalhead with an unruly head of hair who sort of resembles a baby Rob Zombie. It’s jarring the first time he speaks, but his cadence lends itself well to a character who’s flailing around, trying desperately to cling to some kind of life raft.

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The camera of cinematographers Brian Sowell and Mike Testin keeps switching perspectives in Jimmy and Stiggs and constantly moves around the tight space, which stops the film from feeling too static or claustrophobic. It’s almost as though Begos and Mercer tossed the camera back and forth between them, which they probably did at certain points given how the movie was made. Equally, a fight between Jimmy and what is clearly an unmoving alien puppet recalls the iconic Molly Dolly tussle in the Sabrina the Teenage Witch season 3 episode “Good Will Haunting” (1998). It’s endearingly janky, as is a scene where the titular characters viciously beat each other up with discarded alien body parts. Jimmy and Stiggs gets a bit haunted house-y towards the end, which is very Alien (1979), but, for the most part, it’s a down-and-dirty grindhouse affair, as well as a remarkable display of ingenuity that makes you want to go out and make a movie yourself. 

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Unequivocally a Begos joint (complete with a fun nod to the filmmaker’s 2022 film Christmas Bloody Christmas), Jimmy and Stiggs is frenetic, metal AF and feels dangerous, which is something that’s sadly missing from a lot of modern horror movies. The Russells’ jaw-dropping practical FX reaffirm them as the best in the business right now, while the writer-director’s starring role, dedication and unmatched commitment to making the craziest movies possible further establishes just how vital Begos is to the horror industry.

Joey Keogh (@JoeyLDG) is a writer from Dublin, Ireland with an unhealthy appetite for horror movies and Judge Judy. In stark contrast with every other Irish person ever, she’s straight edge. Hello to Jason Isaacs. Thank you for reading film criticism, movie reviews and film reviews at Vague Visages.

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