phancy.com - horror reviews - MOH 2025

Control Freak



IMDb Info

Release Year: 2025
Runtime: 1h 44m
Country: USA
Language: English
Genre Tags: Horror
Plot Summary: A motivational speaker is tormented by an unrelenting itch on the back of her head.

Poster - Title Card


phancy.com rating:

phancy.com notes: I wanted to like this more, but I just couldn't emotionally get into it. The screenplay, direction and Tran's performance definitely feel personal and lived in, but the story starts with our control freak character already at the top of her career and in full crisis, and only goes up from there. Without a baseline, I had a hard time gauging how I should feel about... anything. I also assume she's a control freak from the title, but the movie doesn't actually feature too much freaky control, which is my other gripe. It's a movie about unattainable perfection, or maybe it's about generational trauma, or substance abuse, or crippling depression, or suicide, or overcompensating for self-loathing by becoming a motivational speaker, or anexiety about having children, or a combo of some or all of those. It's a lot, and mostly just felt messy to me. That said, the nightmarish anxiety feels real and saves this from being a slog, but I did wind up thinking about weird character details that didn't make sense instead of worrying about what Kelly Marie Tran was worried about.


Outside Reviews:

Matt Zoller Seitz
3.5 out of 4 stars - rogerebert.com

In a strange, dark way, "Control Freak" could be characterized as self-help work of a different sort. Rather than offering thought prompts and action memos, it offers something that's more akin to a vessel containing shards of many different types of mirrors—and a lot of blood and guts. I suspect that the more open viewers are to the idea of just staring into the vessel and allowing their minds to roam, the more they'll like it.