Jimmy and Stiggs

After a couple of fake trailers for amusingly dumb horror flicks, it was a genuine surprise that the opening of the film was shot from Jimmy's perspective. We're along for the ride in real-time as Jimmy putters and mutters about his apartment, doing coke and smoking grass and downing whiskey and watching porn. While the shot does make these moments more engaging than they would be otherwise, the approach really starts to shine as the action begins. We feel his rising anxiety as a few small earthquakes shake his apartment. No big deal; this is L.A., after all. But quickly, paranoia gives way to reality as shit gets weird. His hallway turns into an infinite maze, hours pass in the blink of an eye, gravity throws him to the ceiling mere inches from his quick moving fan, and a few small, gray aliens attack him. When he wakes up, dazed from the insanity of the night before, we see his face for the first time. And we watch him resolve that if those motherfuckers return tonight, it will go down differently.

This provides a brief reprieve for the audience to prepare for what's to come. That was just the initial offer, so you can bet that if it appealed to you in any way, you'll be grinning ear to ear by the end. Ensuring things will get even crazier is the entrance of Stiggs, a childhood friend with whom Jimmy had a falling out a few months back. So even before the aliens return, blood is running hot, with the two men in each other's faces and waving guns around and hurling accusations of poor character. They fight long enough for Stiggs to get trapped in the apartment by the onset of the night's assault. It's the perfect setup, ensuring that any gap in the external threat can be filled by the internal one. And once Jimmy becomes convinced the aliens are cloning people, the distrust becomes existential.

This is a midnight movie to its core, a sci-fi splatter-fest drenched in enough neon paint and goo to empty a warehouse (or at least a small hardware store). As such, the film isn't exactly "gory", at least not in the traditional sense; being aliens, their blood is a thick neon red-orange, and they have an exoskeleton instead of flesh. Sure, Jimmy's apartment (which is incidentally Begos' apartment) is covered from head to toe in alien viscera by the end. But combined with the ethereal haze that accompanies the invasion, the strobing of the multi-colored lights throughout the small space, and the unstable 16mm handheld camerawork, the result is far more hallucinatory and gross than it is terrifying. It's more Hausu than Texas Chainsaw Massacre, while hemming closer to Mandy in tone.

Read my full review on Pop Culture Maniacs.