Janie (Sarah Hagan, Millie from Freaks and Geeks) isn’t sure of her past. Did she have a traumatic incident? Were her parents something out of a fairy tale? Why have they left her in the care of the brutal Irma (Barbara Crampton), who keeps her on a strict diet and treats her as if she were a prisoner? Why does Irma use a tuning fork on her? And just what is wrong with Janie, who has regular seizures and violent outbursts?

Perhaps Irma was right to treat Janie this way after we see how she stalks Savannah (Sara Malakul Lane) and her boyfriend Connor (Riley Litman). That may be true when Janie snarls that she’s just the housekeeper. But Irma promised Janie’s mother in death that she would take care of her, and Janie’s father is gone. So she remains in this stark home, making her nutrition shakes, doing yoga with he,r and even putting her into a shock collar to keep her from leaving the house.

Except that Janie learns to love the pain and overcomes it.

Soon, she’s using the same abusive treatment on Savannah — spoiler warning: after bashing her lover’s brains in a mid-sex act — and forcing her to wear the shock collar. Directed and written by Ben Cresciman, this seems like an art film, yet it has the exploitation that makes it seem like a film that would play at a less reputable movie theater. Barbara Crampton is always the best part of this, but Hagan is also immensely talented.

I can see why some people reviewed this and hated it; it’s slow-moving, it’s confrontational in its gore, and it has a lesbian lead who is going mental for the entire running time and her obsession with a woman is presented as another part of her mental illness. But hey, I got this from Gregory Joseph’s Movies Jean Rollin and Jess Franco Might Like, If They Were Still Alive Letterboxd list, which fits right into their movies.

You can watch this on Tubi.

This Tubi Original comes from director Victoria Drew (Love You to Death: Mommy’s Missing) and writer Savannah Lucas (Viewer Discretion Advised: The Story of OnlyFans and Courtney Clenney, Scariest Monsters In the World) and is all about Lonnie David Franklin Jr., known as the Grim Sleeper because, unlike many serial killers, he took a break from killing for 14 years before starting again. He was convicted for the murders of nine women and one teenage girl.

His crimes may have started in 1974 when he was in the Army. A 17-year-old girl in West Germany was assaulted by Franklin and two other soldiers while he took photos. After she told him she wanted to see him again, he gave her his phone number, which is how he was caught.

The Grim Sleeper’s crimes were a big deal in the 1980s when he was known as the Southside Slayer and committed the Strawberry Murders, which was a code word for sex workers who did hard drugs. The killer only came for black women in South Central Los Angeles, and the police may not have warned them enough of the danger. By 1987, when the case went cold, the Los Angeles Police Department. They believed that there could be as many as four serial killers committing these crimes.

Today, it’s believed that some clients of these sex workers could have killed these women unrelated to the overall crimes. At the same time, serial killer Louis Craine committed at least two of the murders, and Daniel Lee Siebert, Chester Turner, Ivan Hill and Michael Hughes killed one victim. Yet seven victims were all killed with a .25 caliber gun, and the murderer was never found.

In 2007, Janecia Peters’ murder — and the DNA analysis that didn’t exist in the past — led to evidence in at least eleven unsolved murders. LA Weekly reporter Christine Pelisek reported on this case extensively and even interviewed the sole survivor, Enietra Washington, who described Franklin, who was on unsupervised probation and didn’t have to add his DNA to the national database.

How did they catch him? He did this by getting his saliva off the pizza crust where he worked. When they searched his home, they immediately found over 180 photos of victims — some unknown — were found. By the end of the searches, 1,000 or more photos and several hundred hours of videos of his victims were found.

This Tubi Original may not tell true crime fans anything new, but it certainly will get you started if you don’t know the entire story. What’s crazy is that there are so many murders — including the crimes of the Belize Ripper — that Franklin may have been responsible for. He died in prison in 2020 with no signs of trauma.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In February of 2018, Patrick De La Cerda was shot four times when he answered the front door, thinking that a package had arrived. He thought it was an engagement ring for his fiancée, Jessica Devnani. Instead, he found death.

According to Devnani, her ex-boyfriend, Gregory Bender, was responsible. They already had a restraining order against him after hundreds of abusive calls and messages. A judge made Bender turn over his extensive gun collection. The calls stopped until one night. The same night that De La Cerda was murdered.

Bender’s ex-wife, Daymara Sanchez — he was dating Devnani while married to her — found a notebook with the entire plan, which she gave to the police. The notebook pages had De La Cerda’s address, drawings of his home, and notes on how to enter and leave without being seen.

In May of 2021, Bender was found guilty of first-degree murder and is now in prison, doing a life sentence. This Tubi Original, directed by Victoria Duley (who has made several Tubi true crime stories) and written by Curtis Paine, explains the events of this case and how the law got justice for De La Cerda.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell), this film explores the lifelong relationship between Catherine Hewitt (Elisabeth Moss) and Virginia Lowell (Katherine Waterston). Last year, Virginia was going through a bad time, and Catherine tried to help her; this year, Catherine is dealing with the suicide of her father, a man to who she gave everything, and her boyfriend James (Kentucker Audley) leaving her.

Last year, James took away from their relationship and this year, the man who gets in the way is Virginia’s neighbor Rich (Patrick Fugit). We quickly discover that Catherine’s issues are way worse than anyone believed; Virginia says she has nothing and is no one, as the only two men she put her life into have left her.

This happens when two people who say they know each other so well soon learn that they have no clue at all about each other. This leads to dialogue like “What’s it like, having all the answers all the time to everything?” and a feeling that a hagsploitation breakdown is about to happen at any moment, but what is sadder is that instead of being served a dead bird or shoved down the steps, these women inflict greater misery upon one another by the breaking of whatever supposed connection they once had.

At one point, Catherine takes all of her rage and explodes at Rich, saying, “You fucking animal. You unrepentant piece of shit. You click your tongue, and you revel in the affairs of others. You are worthless. You don’t know anything about me. You show up to fuck my best friend, and you pry into the lives of others to conceal how worthless and boring your own life is. I don’t deserve this. I just want to be left alone. I want to be left alone with the few people who are left in this world who are decent. You are weak and greedy and selfish, and you are the root of every problem. You are why people betray one another. You are why there is nowhere safe or happy anymore. You are why depression exists. You are why there is no escape from indecency and gossip and lies. You, Rich, you are why my father had to die. Because he couldn’t live in a world like this.”

Yeah, it’s not a fun vacation.

This has tones of Rosemary’s Baby (that party nightmare), Repulsion, Persona, Images, The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, Sisters and Interiors while having some Let’s Scare Jessica To Death without getting into the supernatural. It feels even more frightening like you’re trapped in the house with these people, waiting for their reality to implode.

Also: Elisabeth Moss being unhinged in this has only increased my crush. I can admit that.

This Vice documentary, directed by Adam Desiderio and Ben C. Solomon, has “exclusive access to Ukrainian officials, soldiers and civilians, explore the human cost and strategic decisions made to save their most key city in an endless war with Russia.”

For ten months in the city of Bakhmut, Ukrainian forces used everything they had to fight off Russian invaders. Today, our President would say that this was a stupid war and “I told them that I want the equivalent, like $500 billion of rare earth, and they’ve essentially agreed to do that, so at least we don’t feel stupid. Otherwise, we’re stupid. I said to them, we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money.”

Have people forgotten this war? I wonder. I’m of two minds about it, as there’s a major Nazism to some of the defending forces, but it’s also that there’s nobody good in it. Actually, there’s nobody good in the world these days. I remain despondent and yet I keep watching these Tubi Original docs instead of putting my head in the sand because I feel like that would be even worse. I worry about what to do and don’t know the answers. Maybe I’m just meant to write about inconsequential things, but I wish that my words at least made people feel better or brought about understanding.

You can watch this on Tubi.

In yet another example of Tubi teaching me about culture, this is a documentary about Nipsey Hussle, a rapper who went from making mixtapes to becoming a major celebrity in the genre and the owner of the Marathon Clothing store and All Money In label.

Unlike many rappers, Hussle wanted to invest in and provide opportunities in his hometown of Crenshaw and beyond. While speaking frankly about his past with gangs, he denounced guns in the material he created and sought to inspire others.

That was until March 31, 2019, when he was shot at least 10 times in the parking lot of his store and then kicked in the head. Why did Eric Holder do it? Supposedly, the two men fought over a rumor that Holder had cooperated with law enforcement.

Hussle was well-known enough that President Obama said, “While most folks look at the Crenshaw neighborhood where he grew up and see only gangs, bullets, and despair, Nipsey saw potential.”

His 25.5 mile-long funeral parade inspired the gangs of Los Angeles to have a cease-fire, as a cross-section of gangs marched together at a memorial for Hussle.

The main emotion I gathered from this was sadness. It’s a shame that someone who wanted to unite people is gone.

You can watch this on Tubi.

Directed and written by Carol Morley, this stars Maisie Williams and Florence Pugh in early roles as Lydia Lamont and Abbie Mortimer, classmates at a British girl school in the late 60s. Lydia is fixated on Abbie, who is already pregnant by one boy and attempts to abort it by making love to another, Lydia’s brother Kenneth (Joe Cole).

While in detention together, Abbie has a fainting spell, goes into convulsions and dies while Lydia watches. Soon, these fainting spells spread through the school, and even one young teacher has one. No one will investigate the reasons until a mass spell at an assembly closes the school. Abbie is expelled,d and soon, her mother (Maxine Peake) learns that her daughter and son are having an incestuous romance. Well, they’re only half-brother and sister, as the reasons why the mother is agoraphobic are revealed: Abbie is the child of rape.

Running through the night, the mother finally leaves the house, only to watch her daughter nearly die as she falls from a tree into a lake. It takes that to bring her back to reality, to show emotion.

According to Lancet Psychiatry, this movie is “a remarkably accurate adaption of an authentic paper, published in 1973 in the newly formed Psychological Medicine, describing an epidemic of fainting in a north London girls’ school.” That would be Hilda’s Girls’ School in Blackburn, England, in 1965.

I love how author Simon Wessley described the movie: “In the end, the film leaves no room for ambiguity that the phenomena described must reflect powerful psychological and social forces, but considerable ambiguity as to why these events unfolded as they did.”

This has echoes of Picnic at Hanging Rock, If… and The Crucible, yet it is very much its own movie. It’s filled with ideas, and I hope Morley makes something else this intense.

You can watch this on Tubi.

If you listened to the first season of Serial, you already know everything there is to know about this case, but Tubi is counting on you to watch this anyway. And if you haven’t, it’s the tale of Adnan Syed, who spent 22 years in prison for a murder he claims he didn’t commit and how he may return to prison yet again.

Despite his conviction for the murder of Hae Min Lee, Syed claimed that there were inconsistencies in the case — Serial really explained these — and that’s led to this case getting so much publicity.

This month, Adnan Syed will appear in court for a hearing on his motion for a reduced sentence. He was freed in 2022 due to issues with the evidence. However, in 2024, the Maryland Supreme Court upheld an appellate court’s ruling to reinstate the conviction. This story is not over; this documentary is just one of the many you can watch to learn more about it. I’ve heard it plays a little fast with the truth, so as always, watch several of these and form your own theory.

I mean, you can get the story on Dateline, 48 Hours, 20/20 and all of those other shows that play in this house all through the day and night.

You can watch this on Tubi.