Parents' Guide to Eli Roth Presents: Jimmy and Stiggs

This alien-attack horror movie is an escalated onslaught of shouting, swearing, drinking, drugs, and unending amounts of spurting, neon-colored extraterrestrial goo, but that's about it. Filmmaker Joe Begos previously made the incredible Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022), a movie about a killer robot Santa Claus that was shot with a uniquely dazzling color scheme and a true love for the genre. Like that movie, Eli Roth Presents: Jimmy and Stiggs was shot on 16 mm film, and it uses a similar color scheme, though that makes less sense in someone's house than it does a town decorated for the holidays. And while the previous movie had a fun banter between a "will they or won't they" couple, this one focuses on two old friends whose relationship has fallen apart because of alcohol. All they can do is shout at one another and fight, as Jimmy convinces the six-months-sober Stiggs that he must drink to protect himself from the aliens. Before long, Stiggs is drunk, high, and maniacally euphoric. (This is far from a healthy friendship or a healthy message.)

Frankly, both men are just too volatile to care anything about. The movie has a couple of POV sequences—one that opens the movie and another that closes it—that set up some kind of mystery, but it doesn't offer enough information to be interesting. So it's ultimately just a slow piling up of alien ooze that doesn't look like anything real, so it's more gross than shocking. (It's strangely similar to Peter Jackson's early gross-out movies Bad Taste and Braindead.) Jimmy (and, presumably Begos, given that the movie was reportedly shot in his own house) keeps a poster for Cannibal Holocaust in his bedroom, a movie that's somewhat notorious for giving viewers bragging rights if they manage to endure it. Eli Roth Presents: Jimmy and Stiggs is something like that.