Shudder Saturday: Jimmy And Stiggs (2025)

The latest slice of neon and bloodshed from writer-director Joe Begos is arguably even more lo-fi and low-budget than usual. Fans of his work will find plenty to enjoy, I suspect, but others may be turned off by the strange energy of it.

Begos also stars onscreen as Jimmy Lang, a man who has a close encounter of the probing kind one evening. Determined not to let it happen again, he prepares to fight back against anything else that enters his home. That includes his friend, Stiggs Randolph (Matt Mercer), although maybe the two can work together to cause some harm to creatures that certainly don't come in peace.

This is a mess, but I expected that from a Begos movie. Unfortunately, it's a strangely boring and unimpressive mess. That's certainly not what I expected. Apparently shot in the home of Begos over four years, starting during wild times of the Covid pandemic, this may only run for 79 minutes, but it feels at least twice that long. And that's not to do with my viewing being extended by some fake movie trailers at the start (the best one being "The Piano Killer") that ensure you cannot forget Eli Roth being on board as a producer.

Moving between POV shots and more standard camerawork, Begos tries hard to make up for the single location. That cannot be done with energy and movement alone though. I would politely suggest that Begos spends more time on his next project working on the script. While I disagree with the idea that swearing equates to less intelligence, there's an obvious reason why one of the main bits of trivia for this film on IMDb states "the F-word and its variations are uttered over 700 times during the film." Begos has nothing else to fill in the gaps between flashes of violence.

He does a better job as an actor than a writer, but it's still not quite enough to make it easier for viewers to spend time stuck alongside someone so irritating and uninteresting. The same goes for Mercer. Viewers don't get much of a chance to dig below the surface of either character, making it even harder to care about the ultimate outcome of the fighting and killing.

I'm not going to namecheck the specific splattery film with a third act that this felt as if it was trying to emulate, that could spoil both that film and this one, but I will say that this fares even worse when there's a point of comparison. If you're big fan of Begos then you'll already be predisposed to like this, and kudos to him for just using his time and resources to get something made (he's many things, but an easy sell is not one of them). Everyone else should approach with extreme caution, or maybe completely stay away from something that should have been used as the framing story for the last V/H/S/ anthology.

3/10

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Shudder Saturday: Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022)

I have been a fan of writer-director Joe Begos for some time now, watching him improve with every film he's made over the past few years, and when I saw the trailer for Christmas Bloody Christmas I assumed that this would be the peak of his career. It is, after all, the tale of a homicidal, axe-wielding, robo-Santa. Considering how much I'd enjoyed VFW, this seemed like it could become a new festive favourite.

The star of the show is Riley Dandy, playing Tori, a record store owner who wants to spend Christmas Eve getting drunk and laid. Unfortunately, she seems to have swiped right on the wrong Tinder profile, as pointed out to her by her employee/friend, Robbie (Sam Delich). Robbie assures her that she can have a much better time in his company. Tori eventually agrees, which leads to the two of them drinking plenty of whisky, arguing over wildly divergent opinions on music and movies, and eventually heading back to Tori's place for an enjoyably hot 'n' heavy time. Meanwhile, an animatronic Santa figure has malfunctioned. After killing various people en route, it is determined to kill Tori, and anyone else who gets in his way.

Because I knew the main premise of the movie, I was being more patient than I otherwise may have been during the opening act. It's a bit of a slog though, with Begos seemingly more interested in filling the script with references than creative kills and bloodshed. The runtime is about 87 minutes, but it feels a bit longer than that, due to the time taken to get things properly started, as well as a finale that slightly outstays its welcome. Things do improve, thankfully, and there's a great 20-30 minutes in the second act of the film that makes it all worthwhile.

It's also worth mentioning that Begos once again shows how well he uses whatever budget is available to him. He has a lo-fi, grunge (although maybe best to say punk), aesthetic throughout, as usual, but that fits in with his sensibilities, making you feel as if you've just discovered this gem in the Horror section of a local VHS store. The colour scheme is the expected mix of green and red throughout, and Begos makes great use of festive lighting to frame and filter a lot of the action. Almost every set-piece is infused with the pulsing glow of lights, whether they're the ones decorating a house or the blue and red bulbs atop a police car.

Dandy and Delich are fun people to spend time with, and the former is set up from the very beginning as a potential final girl well worth rooting for, and Abraham Benrubi is effective as the killer Santa, his plodding and determined movements accompanied by the whirring and ker-chunk noises you'd expect to hear from such a figure. I looked up a dictionary of technical terms, ker-chunk is definitely the correct word there. There's a fleeting appearance from genre stalwart Graham Skipper, and local law enforcement is played by Jeff Daniel Philips and Jeremy Gardner, both as equally familiar and welcome to horror fans as Skipper. Everyone does a good job in the acting department, especially when considering how enjoyably daft the material is.

Begos does give viewers what they will expect from this, it’s just a shame that he didn’t figure out a way to streamline the script a bit more. But when it is fully into the whole Santerminator mode in the third act, including some fantastic vehicular stuntwork, it’s impossible not to enjoy what’s happening onscreen and admire Begos for achieving what he set out to do. And the visuals are accompanied by yet another excellent synth score from Steve Moore (a long-time collaborator with Begos, as well as the man who gave us that superb score for The Guest).

Maybe not the instant holiday horror classic I was hoping for, Christmas Bloody Christmas is still a bloody good time, it’s a nice mix of fun and mean-spiritedness that I can see myself returning to next year, even if only to spot more of the many little references and homages dotted throughout almost every scene.

6/10

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