Control Freak
Written and directed by Shal Ngo
Starring Kelly Marie Tran, Miles Robbins, and Toan Le
Rated TV-MA
Runtime: 1 hour and 44 minutes
Available on Hulu March 13

by Samantha McLaren, Staff Writer

Mental health is a delicate subject when it comes to horror. On the one hand, the demons in our heads can be just as scary—if not scarier—than those we see on our screens, creating fertile breeding ground for trauma, terror, and healing on film. On the other hand, it’s all too easy for filmmakers to write themselves into a corner and take the lazy, potentially even dangerous way out. Control Freak plays worryingly close to the edge without tumbling over it, resulting in a frequently tense, engaging watch.

Based on writer-director Shal Ngo’s short film “Control,” Control Freak is the latest of Hulu’s “Bite Size Halloween” shorts to get the feature-length treatment, following in the footsteps of Mr. Crocket (2024), Appendage (2023), and Carved (2024), among several others. Where the short focused on the compulsion alone, comparing it to the sensation of an ant crawling over your skin to make the audience itch, the feature adaptation layers in themes of hereditary mental illness and generational trauma with a supernatural twist. That and many, many more ants.

Kelly Marie Tran stars as Val, a motivational speaker preparing for a major tour who develops a compulsive urge to scratch the back of her head. But the itch just won’t go away, and before long, Val’s life is falling apart along with her scalp.

Early in the film, we learn that Val has unprocessed trauma relating to her mother’s death. She’s also distant with her living relatives, including her father, Sang (Toan Le), and aunt, Thuy (Kieu Chinh). Add to that the fact that she’s secretly taking the pill while her partner Robbie (Miles Robbins) picks out baby names and it’s clear that Val’s issues extend far beyond the itching. There’s a little commentary here about how much weight we put on the words of people whose personal lives are not as perfect as they seem, but the film doesn’t beat us over the head with it. Instead, the focus is squarely on Val and her affliction, which may or may not be the result of a family curse.

It quickly becomes clear that Val’s mother had her own demons—one in particular, according to Sang—and it’s here that the film gets really interesting. Control Freak certainly isn’t the first horror movie to explore mental illness through the lens of demonic possession, but Ngo’s invocation of a “hungry ghost” spirit from Asian folklore is a welcome addition to the subgenre, setting it apart from Catholicism-inspired morality tales. Hungry ghosts, Sang explains, can poison a person with insatiable urges that feed the parasite while weakening the host, eventually allowing the spirit to consume them entirely. And far from being rooted in spiritual weakness, Control Freak’s demons are born from deep trauma, which, in the case of Val’s family, stems from the Vietnam War.

It’s all an apt metaphor for unchecked mental illness, intensified by the hints Ngo drops about how Val’s mother died. Val is already harming herself, scratching and scratching until she bleeds, and by the time the third act rolls around, the specter of suicide hangs heavy in the air. Far too many horror films have blundered down this perilous route in the name of tragedy or simple shock value (Tran’s co-star Robbins starred in one such film, the otherwise compelling Daniel Isn’t Real, in 2019), but Control Freak takes a more nuanced approach. The self-mutilation reaches a frenzied peak in a nail-biting will-she-or-won’t-she scene involving an electric saw, but Ngo is careful to emphasize that the things our inner demons tell us to do aren’t the answer to our problems. Not even close.

While this is commendable, it feels like Ngo wanted to have his cake and eat it, writing in both the denial and dawning horror phases of demonic possession before reclaiming Val’s agency by showing how much she’s trained for this moment. It’s possible that her preparation was subconscious, along with her fear of passing down her genes, but this dangling question mark robs the conclusion of some of the power it might otherwise have packed.

Still, Tran’s performance is strong enough to make you overlook some of the film’s shakier logic and uneven pacing. Her portrayal of Val is always sympathetic, even as the character’s confident public-facing persona gives way to combativeness and rapidly spiraling anxiety. We’ll often hear her scratching before we see it, creating an oppressive, uneasy viewing experience that, combined with the real ants regularly crawling over characters’ skin, is enough to make even the most desensitized movie watcher itch. Throw in a practical-effects-driven demon and just a splash of shocking gore, and this is one horror film that should be on every horror fan’s radar this year.

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