“Control Freak” Doesn’t Quite Scratch Its Horror Itch

Control Freak (Shal Ngo, 2025) 3 out of 5 stars

Negative self-talk is one of the most common feelings in the world. It can be a constant weight around people’s necks, holding them back from accomplishing their goals. But in writer/director Shal Ngo’s new film Control Freak, it’s much more literal. In his world, we learn that the evil voice in your head is not only real, but may be actively trying to devour you from the inside. Ngo (The Park) has a good sense for horror, employing visually striking scares and immersive sound design. However, his script wastes too much time keeping the viewer guessing about its premise. A strong conclusion and a killer performance from Kelly Marie Tran (Star Wars: The Last Jedi) make up for a very circular plot.

Tran plays Val Nguyen, a successful Vietnamese-American motivational speaker. As evidenced by the title, she rigidly controls every aspect of her life, from her marketing to her diet to her relationship with her husband Robbie (Miles Robbins, Y2K). On the eve of her first world tour, Val seemingly has the perfect life. However, she secretly suffers from a compulsive itch at the back of her head, to the point where she’s drawing blood. Even worse, she’s having visions of a parasitic demon from her homeland. Now, Val must investigate her family history to learn the truth about this demon and see if she can survive it.

From the beginning, Ngo treats the demon as a metaphor for self-doubt and self-harm. Val has lived with a nagging voice in her head since she was a child, only realizing as an adult that it could have supernatural origins. It feeds on Val’s sense of worth, but instead of healing the doubt, she has hidden from it. Tran convincingly plays a woman whose entire career is built on suppressing her urges, like a string wound too tautly. She sells people the idea of taking control of their lives when she’s slowly losing control of her own. Val’s scratching is a symptom of a bigger problem, something lurking inside that yearns to wear her down until there is nothing left.

The film is at its strongest when it grapples with this theme of affliction, especially when Val speaks to her family about the demon’s generational history in Vietnam. Sadly, Ngo’s script takes too long to commit to this. Val spends the first hour of the movie looping back and forth between the same handful of locations: her house, her father’s monastery, her aunt’s salon, and her family’s storage unit. She learns new information about the demon, has clear evidence that something is happening to her, but takes far too long to believe what people are telling her.

This also extends to the disturbing visions Val has throughout the film: being submerged by an army of hands, bugs crawling around her skin, hearing voices from a dark room. Ngo wants the viewer to question if the demon is real or if Val is simply crazy. The film succeeds for short-term scares, but never feels like the tension is building enough to support the concept. Instead, it just feels like Control Freak is treading water until its conclusion.

Thankfully, said conclusion is satisfying, with Tran really devoting herself to unleashing Val’s pent-up rage. It even ties in a nice message of generational healing. I just wish the rest of the film lived up to this high. The final product is a combination of Asian-American drama and slow-burn horror that should work but only does so in short bursts. Despite this, I commend Kelly Marie Tran for finding a role that allows her to keep expressing herself in genre fiction. I look forward to what both she and Ngo do next. Hopefully, by now, they’ve both shed the shackles of self-doubt.

George W. Campbell

George W. Campbell is a director/screenwriter/editor from Bowie, Maryland, whose films focus on themes of family and personal relationships. As a Nicaraguan-American filmmaker, he aims to highlight specific parts of his culture and personal experiences (songs, dances, foods, and language).