Control Freak is a new Hulu movie that reminds me of The Substance, in a good way. The Substance recently got a lot of awards season attention for its gore-dripping explorations of the unnatural pursuit of physical perfection, and Control Freak brings a similar ironic horror tone to its cautionary tale about personal perfection. It takes aim at the self-help industrial complex and all those social media gurus who are “here to help” and this free app based on ancient Hermetic law.
Valerie (Kelly Marie Tran) is a formerly homeless woman who’s become a world famous motivational speaker. She lives with her husband in a swanky house where she’s getting ready for a tour of Asia while she slowly comes unwound due to an unceasing itch on the back of her head. Is it just nerves or is it a parasitic ghost feeding on generations of family trauma?
Tran attempts to make us believe that Valerie is ultra-successful and devoted to perfection, but between her try-hard acting and the clunky dialogue she gets from writer-director Shal Ngo, she’s not really up to the task. It’s a fundamental weak point of this film, but the idea behind Control Freak is unique enough, and the story and cast paradoxically all become more believable as this movie becomes more unhinged. Control Freak isn’t really the equal of The Substance — a rather masterful movie that ticked a bunch of horror genre boxes. This is serviceable filmmaking, but Control Freak is a horror picture about parasitic ghosts from Vietnam, so that’s mostly good enough. Don’t watch Control Freak for trophy-winning acting or innovative cinematography. Watch it because horror movies are scary and fun. Control Freak is definitely a horror movie, and it’s a don’t-miss for fans of practical special effects and imaginative movie monster magic.
Val is forced to reconnect with her estranged father when she needs her birth certificate so her tour can travel through China. Her dad’s cryptic warnings about a hungry ghost called Sanshi and an old photo album hiding family secrets are all Val needs to begin spiraling down a rabbit hole of paranoia, demonology, interrogating her nail-salon-owning auntie and making her interactions with her long-suffering husband even more cringy that normal.
Control Freak is about how we present ourselves to the world, versus the version we live with in our families, behind closed doors. It’s about the personas we create in our professional lives, and how they can be undermined by our psychological shadows. Val is running from the repressed memories of a childhood tragedy, and from the person she was when she was living in her car and not sure where her next meal might come from. All of these things gave Val the motivation and resilience to build her amazing life, but unless they’re healed and assimilated, she’ll be swallowed alive by the past in the form of a creepy entity that visits her in the middle of the night and looks like Venom from Marvel Comics meets David Cronenberg’s version of The Fly.
By the time one of Val’s presentations goes disastrously off the rails, Control Freak is off to the races in a wave of blood and gore, medical horror, traditional superstition, impulse control issues, self harm and addiction. Will Val be able to commit to a positive mental attitude in order to manifest her best self living the life she was meant to have? Or maybe she can improvise a living room séance and manage a one-on-one showdown with her paranormal parasite, and take it for a midnight swim? Stock up on moisturizer and confront your own control freak on Hulu.
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.