TUBI ORIGINAL: Match (2025)

Match is directed by Danishka Esterhazy, who remade Slumber Party Massacre. It’s all about Paola (Humberly González), whose first date with a man she met online takes place inside a terrifying house and involves a way-too-long tea with his mother, ending with her knocked out and tied up. What’s next?

Lucille (Diane Simpson) lives in a suburban home that’s really a prison for multiple people, including her deformed son Henry, whom Paolo thinks she’s been talking to the entire time. Instead, she’s been chatting with Lucille, who is looking for the perfect woman to mate with her beloved boy.

All along, Paola’s sister, Maria (Shaeane Jimenez), has been telling her there are so many red flags. When her sister doesn’t return in time to see their father before his surgery, she starts to worry. That brings her to the same house of horrors, where another date.

The reveal that Lucille has been catfishing as her son Henry adds a layer of psychological voyeurism. It’s not just a kidnapping; it’s a mother’s twisted attempt at curating a bloodline. Diane Simpson’s performance as Lucille is genuinely unsettling, oscillating between a doting mother and a predatory architect of a human breeding program.

Written by Al and Jon Kaplan (Zombeavers, Lowlifes), this has two scenes that are guaranteed to blow your mind. In one, Lucille explains sex to Henry while jerking off her son and another where Paolo stops Henry from assaulting her by, well, snapping a mousetrap on his meat. I’ve never seen that before!

What motivates Lucille to create this twisted breeding program for her son? How does Paola’s sister, Maria, react when she discovers the truth about what happened to her? What consequences will Paola face after her harrowing experience in Lucille’s home? So many questions. Don’t pass this one up just because it’s a low-budget Tubi original. There’s something good here.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Adopted 2 (2025)

Remember how wild Adopted was? I mean, it ended up with ten-year-old Dylan (Jayden Aguirre) facing a literal firing squad of cops. I’m so excited that Chris Stokes is back with a sequel, because that movie earned one.

Dylan starts the movie inside a mental health facility. But he soon escapes and finds his way inside the home of another family, a place where he can be so sweet until the time when he loses it, yet again, and threatens everyone’s life.

Directed by Chris Stokes and written by Marques Houston, who returns as Detective Dante Miller, this finds the Andrews family — Ava (Princess Love Norwood), Caleb (Don Benjamin) and Mason (Preston Best) — repeating the pattern of Dylan: at first, he’s so full of love. By the end, he’s shotgunning blasting your favorite aunt. They’re just getting over the loss of a son, and now, they’ve let a total wildman into their home.

While many sequels try to reinvent the wheel, Chris Stokes and Marques Houston know exactly what their audience wants: high-stakes melodrama and a child who embodies true evil. Aguirre plays Dylan with a terrifying on/off switch. One moment, he’s the healing balm for a mother’s broken heart; the next, he’s a tactical mastermind wielding a shotgun with the efficiency of a seasoned action star.

Look, this is almost the same movie as the first, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t watch the third.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Takeout (2025)

Director and writer Jem Garrard has made R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead, the Invasive movies and Slay for Tubi. All of these movies are in the upper tier of originals made for the streamer, so when I see their names above the credits, I know I’m about to watch something unique.

Nova (N’kone Mametja) is the anchor of a scuzzy, fluorescent-lit diner that seems to be held together by grease and broken dreams. It’s the kind of 2 A.M. haunt where the coffee is burnt, and the hope is non-existent. The tension ramps up when Nova becomes convinced that the silent, unassuming man at Table 5 isn’t just a late-night regular. He’s the serial killer currently dominating the local news cycles.

The evidence is mounting: a suspicious car, a body-shaped bundle in the backseat, and a demeanor that screams predator. But Garrard pivots from a standard slasher into something much more cynical. Once Nova’s co-workers catch wind of the massive bounty on the killer’s head, the diner transforms into a pressure cooker. To these wage slaves, the man at table 5 isn’t a threat to be feared; he’s a winning lottery ticket wrapped in a blood-stained jacket.

Shot in South Africa, this feels like it could be anywhere in America, a lonely place where no one cares about anyone. There’s no future, and that lack of future could end a lot sooner than anyone believes. I really enjoyed the downtrodden nature of this, as well as the constant twists.

You can almost smell the stale cigarettes and floor cleaner. Garrard balances this grim reality with a relentless series of twists that force the audience to constantly re-evaluate who the real villain is: the man with the dead body, or the “normal” people willing to do anything to escape their poverty. As with their other films, Garrard has made something special here.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: Get Off My Lawn (2025)

Directed by Amara Cash and written by Arland Digirolamo and Alana Wexler, Get Off My Lawn starts with Jackie (Camila Banus) and Jason (Tahj Mowry) getting a too good to be true deal on the house of their dreams. That’s until they meet Alec Todd (Jonah Hwang), the next-door neighbor who believes their home should be his.

That’s because his grandfather had promised it to him. However, his father, Denny (Max E. Williams), wanted it sold, so Alec convinces his mother, Denny (Max E. Williams), to sell to the young couple, hoping to get them to move quickly. Every single thing they do enrages him, from moving Gramps ‘ rules of the house off the mantle to getting rid of the backyard memorial to him. 

While Alec’s best friend Ethan (Tyler Lofton) and girlfriend Ray (Kayla Maisonet) are normal teenagers, he’s stuck in the 1950s and seems as prim and proper as anyone could be. He repeats, many times, that “rules must be followed or there will be consequences.” That seems to mean using his friends to prank the married couple out of their new home. One wonders how he keeps his girlfriend, or if the villain even cares.

I love my mom’s house and want her to stay in it as long as she can. So I get how it feels to lose a home that you love so much. That said, I would not go as murder-crazy as Alec, but man, he’s a great character. Alec’s behavior quickly shifts from creepy to dangerous. He leaves a dead rat on their doorstep and claims his grandfather is buried in their yard. He grows increasingly insane as the film progresses, and without him, this movie would fall flat.

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: TMZ No BS: Viral Superstars (2024)

Justin Bieber was in a talent contest and posted a series of clips from a local competition in Stratford, Ontario. Scooter Braun actually clicked on one by accident while looking for a different singer. The viral aspect worked because it felt intimate, like you were discovering a talented younger brother before the industry polished him up.

Viral videos have changed the world of celebrities, and hey, here’s TMZ to tell us more.

This TMZ show goes into Danielle Bregoli (Bad Babie), who was on The Dr. Phil Show, as well as Doja Cat, who dressed as a cow and danced to a novelty song called “Mooo!,” which was the definition of a calculated viral moment. She made it in a day as a joke, but the absurdist humor of stuffing fries in her nose while dressed as a cow proved she understood internet culture better than most PR firms. It turned her from an underground rapper into a household name.

Kate Upton doing the dougie at a Clippers game took her from a model to a big name. Like Bieber, The Weeknd is a Canadian music star who rose to prominence online and went on to have the biggest-selling single ever. To be fair, he took a much darker, more mysterious route. In 2010, he uploaded tracks to YouTube under the name The Weeknd, without any photos of himself. The anonymity created a massive underground buzz that forced the mainstream to pay attention. and Rebecca Black, who sang “Friday,” in which I learned the words “partying, partying.”

In the Classic Hollywood era, studios like MGM or Warner Bros. literally owned their stars. They picked their clothes, their dates, and their names. Today, the audience acts as the studio. We vote for stars with likes and shares. The watercooler moment is dead because everyone has a different watercooler, whether that’s TikTok, YouTube or Twitch. We no longer wait for a scout to find talent. We wait for the algorithm to serve it to us.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Tales from the Darkside S2 E10: Ursa Minor (1985)

Will I ever get over the fact that Theodore Gershuny, who directed and wrote this episode, was married to Mary Woronov? Am I really that jealous of a person? Yes.

Based on a story by John Sladek, a former tech writer who was also the author of The New Apocrypha: A Guide to Strange Science and Occult Beliefs, in which he examined the supernatural from a materialist lens, this is the story of Susie (Jamie Ohar), who gets a stuffed bear from her parents (Marilyn Jones and Timothy Carhart). But is it just a teddy bear, or is it something more?

But did her parents even buy it? Neither of them remembers, and soon, bear marks are all over the house and anything that goes wrong is blamed on the bear. Basically: Kids are insane people who live in your house who are ready to kill you at any time. That’s what I learned from this. That and the fact that evil can be inside very small things, and perhaps you should just leave it alone unless you want to end up holding your child as a big bear breaks its way through a door.

The parents spend half the episode debating the logic of the bear’s existence. That’s because in Sladek’s world, the bear isn’t necessarily a demon; it’s a physical object that is simply wrong. The horror isn’t spiritual. It’s a failure of the physical world to behave in the way we want it to.

Plus, the bear acts as a surrogate for Susie’s own burgeoning agency and perhaps her resentment. More than her blaming the bear and trying to get away with it, she’s also in a psychodrama with her parents, as they are actually terrified of the idea that their daughter might be the one marking the house. The bear is just the medium for the chaos kids naturally bring into a sanitized adult world.

B & S About Movies podcast Episode 127: Bigfoot

A whole bunch of Bigfoot this week: Night of the DemonThe Werewolf and the Yeti, The GeekBigfoot vs. D.B. Cooper, Manbeast! and Bigfoot, UFOs and Jesus. You will believe.

You can listen to the show on Spotify.

The show is also available on Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Amazon Podcasts, Podchaser and Google Podcasts

Important links:

Theme song: Strip Search by Neal Gardner.

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TUBI ORIGINAL: R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead (2025)

When his brother Finn (Seth Isaac Johnson) disappears and everyone forgets that he existed, Sam (Bean Reid) must unravel the mystery before his sibling is lost for all time. Directed and written by Jem Garrard (Slay, which a character watches in this movie, as well as Takeout and Invasive) and based on the R.L. Stine short story of the same name from Nightmare Hour, which was also adapted as part of The Haunting Hour TV series, R.L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead is a Tubi Original with a lot going for it.

The town of Redhaven is presented as a slice of heaven where the harvest never ends. However, this prosperity is built on a dark foundation. The secret horror of the child-stealing curse is psychological as much as it is supernatural; when a child is taken by the curse, they aren’t just physically gone. They are erased from the community’s collective memory, leaving only a few to live with the truth.

Sam and his family have just moved to Redhaven and know nothing of its secrets. The child-stealing ritual coincides with Mr. Palmer’s Harvest Festival, which is when the old farmer opens up his farm to everyone. There, as Sam is acting out, he steals a prize pumpkin. Finn brings it back for his brother under the sheriff’s order and is taken. Soon, no one but Sam remembers his brother, except for a girl named Becka (Adeline Lo), who will introduce our hero to the lore and legacy of her town.

I really liked this. It’s inspired by Stine but not slavish to his work. However, it gets the feel right. It’s a gateway horror movie, even if the ending may leave some kids upset, confused and disappointed. That’s why you watch films with them, so you can talk through the things that happened and see what you can learn from it.

The Palmer Farm is filmed on the same location as Pa Kent’s farmhouse on the WB series Smallville

You can watch this on Tubi.

TUBI ORIGINAL: A Mother’s Confession (2025)

Directed by Maya Table and written by the duo of Donna Christopher and LisaBeth Willis, the movie centers on a tragedy that strikes at the heart of a family when a gang shooting leaves young Nathan (James Jay Alexander) — the son of Faith (Ciera Angelia) 00 fighting for his life in a coma.

The film sets up a high-stakes investigation led by a detective who admits the shooting is likely gang-related, but Faith has little confidence in working with the police. As the plot unravels, her internal conflict shifts from as she goes from a grieving mother to a woman seeking her own brand of justice.

Benny (Raymond Seay) leads the gang who shot Nathan, and he makes his henchmen follow a code of silence, betting on the fact that nobody’s going to talk. The film takes a surprising turn toward religious themes. While it begins as a standard urban thriller or revenge flick, the closing acts lean heavily into the spiritual battle Faith faces.

This was the top movie on Tubi for a few weeks, and you can see why: it tells a story people want to see, with an incredibly dramatic performance by its lead actress. 

You can watch this on Tubi.

SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2026: The Human, Will (2026)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joseph Perry writes for the film websites Gruesome Magazine, The Scariest Things, Horror FuelThe Good, the Bad and the Verdict and Diabolique Magazine; for the film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope and Drive-In Asylum; and for the pop culture websites When It Was Cool and Uphill Both Ways. He is also one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast and can occasionally be heard as a cohost on Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast.

Official synopsis: Marine Cargo Insurance Claims Adjuster William J. Sterbenz, a creature of habit worn down by the daily grind and lonely suburban living, feels helpless against his fate of climbing the corporate ladder. But when a sudden brush with death lights a fire under his ass, Will realizes that he has free will and decides to finally use it, charting a new course for himself as he meanders through new experiences, from Bigfoot hunting to out-of-body time travel – and even coming face to face with his personal guardian angel.

 Writer/director/editor Edward Bursch’s episodic dramedy series The Human, Will is a gentle, philosophical, quirky character study of everyman Will (William J. Sterbenz), who asks for a job demotion and tries to get the most out of life after the sudden unexpected death of his pet fish. He is guided on his journey by his guardian angel (slow-talking comedian Joe Pera, perfectly cast in a mostly narration performance).

The pacing is leisurely, and even unanticipated from-out-of-nowhere occurrences startle in a subtle manner. The comedy is often whimsical, and goes for knowing nods with a smile rather than for belly-laughs. 

The emotional factor is high, though. An episode in which a young Will confronts the adult Will hit me where it counts and caused a pensive trip down nostalgia lane. Another episode involving the hunt for a skunk ape appealed to my cryptozoology interests in a decidedly more fun manner.

Bursch and company deliver a fine series with The Human, Will. Go along with Will on his existential journey and you’ll be treated to an offbeat exploration of what some might consider normalcy.

The first episode of The Human, Will screened at Slamdance, which ran February 24–March 6, 2026 in Los Angeles