Control Freak lacks control of its themes

The Spool / Movies

Hulu’s horror as trauma metaphor lacks the follow-through to realize its themes.

6.4

Control Freak lacks control of its themes

In some circles, complaining about horror films as metaphors for things, especially trauma, is quite in vogue. It requires a certain reading of film history to suggest that horror as metaphor is new to this era, but that’s an argument for another time. The point here is that the problem with Control Freak isn’t that it is using metaphors; it’s that it isn’t using them especially well. They suggest avenues but don’t explore them, stranding the movie in a place neither betwixt nor between.

The titular Control Freak of the film is Valerie (Kelly Marie Tran). She’s built an empire on her self-improvement novels and speaking tours. The main message of her movement is that everyone can only look to themselves for change. Not friends. Not family. Definitely not doctors. It makes sense for her, given her childhood. Her mother ended her life when Valerie was barely school-aged. Her father (Toan Le) was a drug addict who ran away from his life and his child to manage his illness by becoming a Buddhist monk. There were stretches of her life when she really was the only person she could rely on.

Control Freak (<a href= — I’ll say this for Kelly Marie Tran. If I had to burn incense to cast out a monster, I’d just let the thing stay. She’s made of sterner stuff. (Hulu)

However, it is also an isolating philosophy. Valerie hides things from her husband Robbie (Miles Robbins) and discounts her manager’s (Callie Johnson) concerns about the upcoming tour. Her worst “I only have me” choices concern a constant itch on the back of her head. She ignores a doctor’s warning—fittingly delivered by phone as Valerie can’t bring herself to visit the office—that she should have it looked at because her self-medicating isn’t working. She also ignores her father’s spiritual warnings of a parasitic ghost who slowly consumes its host. Instead, she ignores the escalating compulsion even as she starts to do real physical damage to herself. And there’s worse to come.

Tran is very good as Valerie, making her a realistic wounded controller whose strengths quickly become what make her most vulnerable. The film’s repetitious use of the scratching noises that give way to squelching noises is deeply unnerving. As effective are ants as a visual warning of hallucination and a sign of emerging corruption. Their smallness primes the viewer to stay vigilant, giving the audience a taste of Valerie’s own hypervigilance.

Unfortunately, beyond Tran, the performances tend towards serviceable. Le does good work with a brief creepy speech and a momentary freak out over some substances, but has limited screentime. Lack of minutes undercuts Johnson, but unlike Le, she doesn’t get anything to do even in that short time. Robbins is on-screen more often, but the script by writer-director Shal Ngo can’t decide who he is, stranding the actor to play each line but never giving him enough to realize a fully rounded character.

As the film progresses, the monster becomes increasingly corporeal and visible. A dark charcoal in color, it reads on-screen like a combination of a dried-out Stranger Things creature and the Alien Xenomorph with no double mouth. While not the creature’s fault, as its appearances ramp up, Control Freak begins to lose track of itself.

The metaphors of generational trauma that haunt someone are not unfamiliar to audiences by now, but that doesn’t make them inherently less effective. However, the film seems to flinch away from allowing the viewers a proper understanding of that trauma. We see the moment that Valerie’s dad identifies as the moment the ghost attached itself to him. He explains how he took that ghost into his marriage and that he and Valerie’s late mother somehow passed it on to Valerie and helped it grow inside her. The dialogue is skin-crawling for certain, but not especially revealing. It doesn’t add depth to our understanding of Valerie, her family, or the evil entity. It suggests generational trauma but doesn’t truly utilize the storytelling tool.

Even less well utilized is the slam dunk of how self-reliance can curdle into self-denial and isolation. It’s a smart challenge to pit a self-improvement guru who’s built her empire on self-control against an entity that erodes that very control. In practice, though, the film fails to draw much connection between the two. Again, it is the setup of a good idea that it doesn’t follow through on.

By the time Valerie’s battle with her personal demon becomes a bloody mess, complete with table saws and screwdrivers, it’s hard to invest energy in working out how real and how pure psychological the battle might be. It’s a shame because there are some gnarly effects for people into that sort of thing. As not much of a gorehound, the torture devices Valerie builds to stop herself from scratching provide far more effective horror elements. It’s like someone trying to stop their OCD door knob-checking compulsion by wrapping the handle in bits of broken glass and rusty nails. Might it work? Unlikely, and even if it does, what a horrible “cure.” But, again beyond their repetitious use, the film doesn’t give us much of insight into why Valerie would choose such an intense method.

There are several interesting elements in the Control Freak mix. Sadly, a lack of follow-through strands Tran’s excellent work on an island with no clear message but well done body horror sound effects and piles of sinister ants. All of them deserve better.

Control Freak brings its ant infestation to Hulu on March 13.