An Average Movie-Goer’s Review
Spoilers! If you don’t want spoilers – check out the Spoiler-Free post
I love horror movies and if I’m going to watch them anyway, why not write an entertaining/funny review from the POV of an average movie-goer and not a professional critic.
Today we’re looking at the Hulu Original film, Grimcutty
As panic over an internet challenge engulfs a small town, a teen (Sara Wolfkind) and her friends are hunted by a monster known as Grimcutty.
Is Grimcutty Scary?
There are a few jump scares towards the start and the first few minutes are a bit creepy but after that, the movie loses all its horror. You won’t leave the movie scared at all unless you’re an irrational person who thinks “internet challenges” involving monsters are real.
Plot Synopsis:
The movie opens with a mother, Melinda (played by Alona Tal) checking in on her sleeping son Brandon (played by Kayden Koshelev). Thinking he’s asleep, Melinda heads to her room where she researches the dangers of technology on kids.
Meanwhile, Brandon is awake, and after finding his door locked, he climbs out of the window. We also see that Brandon has a lot of band-aids covering his hands. Entering the house through another window, Brandon heads down to the kitchen where he sees the Grimcutty outside. Brandon grabs a knife from the kitchen as the front door opens and the Grimcutty looks in.
Brandon runs to his mom’s room where Melinda is pacing around listening to a news story about the dangers of technology. Melinda tries to get him to put the knife down but as Grimcutty approaches, he stabs his mom.
Title card!
Cut to our main character Asha (played by Sara Wolfkind) making an ASMR video about relaxing and I hate everything about this. I don’t like mouth noises so those two minutes are torture. Two days later, Asha is nervously watching her view count and only has 12 views.
Asha is called downstairs by her dad Amir (played by Usman Ally) and we meet the family. Besides the dad, we have her mother Leah (played by Shannyn Sossamon), and her younger brother Kamran (played by Callan Farris). The family head out to Kamran’s music recital and thanks to Amir’s once-a-week phone-free outing rule, no one brings their phone.
At the recital, Amir and Leah sit next to two other parents, David and Sarah, while Asha steps outside with their daughter, Emily. David tells Amir about some internet challenges going around that made a kid stab his mother referencing the start of the movie.
Other parents start to get notifications and it’s freaking rude as none of them have silenced their phone during a kid’s music recital. Amir gets worried and heads outside to find Asha.
Meanwhile, the girls are using Emily’s phone to check if Asha’s YouTube video has gotten any attention and see that a popular girl, Cassidy, has commented “wow” on the video. Amir finds them on the phone and tells Asha she’s wasting the best years of her life because of phone use I guess?
Later everyone is at home and on their respective devices when Amir and Leah get messages from Sarah and David about Grimcutty. The moment they get the picture, Asha’s door opens on its own and, in a jump scare, Amir jumps out asking to have a family meeting. Amir warns the kids about Grimcutty and basically implies that they would cut themselves over an internet challenge.
That night Amir and Leah get another message from a friend telling them another set of parents caught their daughter cutting themselves. The two decide to do more research and jump onto their respective laptops. In her room, Asha scrolls through a social media app where several teens are posting about having gotten the “Grimcutty talk”.
Later Asha is in the kitchen making some toast and Grimcutty walks in causing her to scream. Amir runs downstairs but Grimcutty is gone. Cut to a short time later and a cop is asking Asha what happen. Asha tells him what the intruder was wearing and the cop pulls out a picture of Grimcutty saying they’ve gotten multiple calls that night about it.
Asha thinks someone is dressing up like Grimcutty and playing a prank on her but the cop dismisses this saying it would have to be a group of people. She then tells him she was making toast and watching a video when Grimcutty showed up. For some reason this makes the cop believe that Asha is lying (WTF?) and asks to speak to her parents alone.
Asha eavesdrops on the conversation and hears the cop tell Amir and Leah that maybe all the teens who saw Grimcutty that night are doing it because the challenge told them to. Is this cop working with Grimcutty?
This whole scene was aggravatingly dumb. Remember all those clown sightings from a few years ago? This scene is as if everyone was just like “Nah you’re all making it up, people would never dress up like clowns to scare people for no reason.”
After the cop leaves Amir takes Asha’s electronics because he’s totally bought into the hysteria. The following morning Amir and Leah take Asha’s and Kamran’s electronics and put them in a “detox box”.
Asha refuses to give her phone and during a tug-of-war for it between her and Amir, she catches a glimpse of Grimcutty. This causes her to scream, let go of her phone, and run to her room.
That night Asha correctly assumes that Kamran has a backup laptop and asks to use it. The bigger question is how the hell do the parents not know about his backup laptop? He’s like 12, they must have bought it. Asha logs onto Twitter and posts a question asking if anyone still has a phone but just after posting, Amir disconnects the router.
After Amir and Leah head to their room, Asha sneaks out, grabs a knife, and breaks the locks of the detox box. As she grabs her phone, Cassidy (played by Tate Moore), who saw her tweets, video calls her. They make plans to meet the following day at school as Asha tries to hide from her parents, who have discovered her phone is missing.
As the call ends Grimcutty appears to Asha in the garage and she runs to the bathroom. She’s able to close the door on its arm but it reaches in and cuts her with its knife. For some reason, Asha still has the knife she used to break into the detox box and she cuts Grimcutty who runs off.
Hearing her screams, Amir and Leah run in and see Asha freaking out with a cut arm and a knife in her hand. Leah, who is a nurse, patches her up as Asha tries to tell them she didn’t do it to herself.
Amir says Asha has to stay home from school but Asha says she wants everything to go back to normal so school is cool. Leah agrees but this leads to an argument between her and Amir.
The following day at school, Asha meets with Cassidy and they find out their parents recited the same exact lines when taking away their electronics. Asha thinks they can get to the bottom of it if they could use a computer but even the school has disconnected their internet. Cassidy remembers a rich friend of hers is having a ditch party and they can use his computer because fuck libraries apparently.
At the party, some dumb douche has the idea to make a video where they all pretend to be brainwashed by Grimcutty. Cassidy and Asha stand in the background looking pretty confused so you know someone is going to see this video later to further the plot.
On the computer, Asha finds Melinda’s blog which includes articles about using a detox box for electronics, an article blaming phones for kids growing horns, and an article blaming 5G for ear infections. Basically, Melinda is an idiot.
They also find an article on Online Challenges featuring a picture of the Grimcutty but when they click on it the article is gone. The two suspect that Melinda lives in their town and decide to pay her a visit but they can’t find her address.
Cassidy decides to head home and leave Asha to continue searching for the address. Meanwhile, Leah and Amir discover Asha isn’t at school and start looking for her. At 7:40 pm they receive a link from a friend with that video from earlier and decide to crash the party. How do they know where to go?
At the house, the party is still going on and Asha is still looking for Melinda’s address, it’s been at least 10 hours since they left school. Asha video calls Kamran and asks him to try to find Melinda’s address. She then spots Grimcutty arriving at the party and runs off.
Grimcutty enters the house and makes a beeline for Asha and she realizes no one else can see it. Cornering her in the kitchen, it cuts her leg but Asha reaches for a knife (because you’re never more than 3 feet from a knife) and cuts Grimcutty causing it to run. Leah and Amir arrive at the house and hear Asha’s cries for help as Grimcutty corners her in a hallway.
Since Asha is still holding onto that knife the Grimcutty grabs her hand and forces her to cut her own arm.
Amir and Leah arrive but all they see is what looks like Asha struggling with herself as she cuts her own arm. Amir runs over to her and grabs the knife. Later as Leah patches up Asha in the car, Amir gets a notification that someone is using the internet at the house.
At the house, Kamran finds the address but as he tries to video call Asha, he sees Grimcutty standing behind him. The family arrive and find Kamran on the floor unconscious but alive. Amir blames Asha for this and they call for an ambulance. The following day Asha wakes up in the hospital with Kamran in the bed next to hers.
Leah tells her they made an appointment for her to see a psychiatrist later on and leaves to get her more bandages. Asha spots Kamran’s laptop that the family brought to the hospital for some reason and opens it finding Melinda’s address.
Grabbing her mom’s keys, she gets dressed and is about to leave when she hears Cassidy is in the hospital. How long does it take to get bandages?
Asha visits Cassidy who tells her that Grimcutty cut her legs right after her parents saw the video of the party. Asha figures out that the Grimcutty attacks are based on the level of hysteria their parents are having.
After what I can only assume was a long journey to manufacture the bandages, Leah returns to the room, finds Asha missing, her keys gone, and sees the address on the computer. Amir enters the room and Leah lies to him about where Asha is… why? She then says there’s nothing on the computer and uses an Uber-like app to call a cab to the address.
Asha arrives at Melinda’s house but Melinda says it was just something blown out of proportion. She also claims to not know about the hysteria it’s caused. Melinda seems a bit unstable and tells Asha to go home.
Instead, Asha sneaks around the house and finds a bunch of broken electronics in the garbage. Why would Melinda still have these in the garbage when we saw earlier that the article about Grimcutty was over two weeks ago?
Asha climbs up and finds a balcony door open. On the second floor, she sees multiple locks on Brandon’s door and decides to enter. She finds even more locks on a closet and, after unlocking them, finds a drugged Brandon. Melinda enters and points a shotgun at Asha.
Leah arrives at the house just as Melinda locks Asha in the room. Melinda plays it off and says Asha broke in talking crazy stuff. Leah believes her and when Asha is let out, she starts freaking out telling her mom about Brandon. Leah doesn’t believe her and smacks her across the face.
In the car, Asha tries to explain herself as she sees the Grimcutty approaching the car but Leah flips out yelling. Completely losing it, she slams her hand against the window which causes it to shatter. It also brings her to her senses as we see the Grimcutty disappear.
Leah tells Asha to stay in the car and goes back to Melinda’s house to question her about Brandon. Melinda denies everything but Leah says she’s never known Asha to be a liar so she just wants to double-check. This is weird because we just watched over an hour of her and Amir calling Asha a liar.
Upstairs we see that Melinda never locked Brandon back up in his closet and now the Grimcutty has appeared. Brandon screams and the women run upstairs. Leah opens the door and sees Brandon floating in the air being choked by something.
Instead of helping her son, Melinda points a shotgun at Leah and blames her for Grimcutty coming back. Asha enters the house distracting Melinda enough to allow Leah to tackle her. They try to leave the house but Melinda gets back up and points the gun at them both. Brandon walks up behind her and stabs her in the leg with a piece of a lock causing her to fall down the stairs.
At the hospital, Amir, who is now completely irrational, looks at Kamran’s browser history and discovers he looked up Grimcutty and a bunch of other weird stuff. Kamran wakes up and sees Grimcutty behind his dad. Amir slams the computer on the floor and tells Kamran to get dressed.
Why doesn’t Grimcutty attack Kamran right now? Has Grimcutty infected Amir? Can Grimcutty infect parents?
Asha and Leah, carrying Brandon, arrive at the hospital and Leah goes off to get Brandon some help. Asha sees one of Cassidy’s friends and learns that Cassidy stabbed herself in the neck. Though she’s not dead, she’s not projected to make it.
Leah enters Kamran’s room and tries to tell Amir that the children were right but Amir notices that Leah has a syringe filled with a sedative. Leah says it will help him relax but he takes it from her as police arrive and take her for questioning regarding Brandon.
As Amir turns back to Kamran he realizes he’s gone. Kamran runs past Asha and Asha pulls him into a closet as he sees the Grimcutty. Asha tells Kamran that the Grimcutty feeds off the hysteria it causes and that Brandon tried to kill his mom to stop the Grimcutty from attacking him.
Asha grabs a pair of scissors and thinks she can hurt the Grimcutty. Since the Grimcutty is currently after Kamran, Asha plans on getting their dad’s attention to have it chase after her. Kamran asks if she’s going to kill their dad if her plan to hurt the Grimcutty doesn’t work and Asha says she doesn’t know before she heads out.
Asha finds Amir as she hears Kamran scream because the Grimcutty has found him. Asha spends the next minute and 10 seconds beating around the bush as we see the Grimcutty choking Kamran. She finally tells Amir she has been watching Grimcutty videos all day and is going to hurt herself.
This causes the Grimcutty to release Kamran and target Asha… why the fuck did she wait 70 seconds to do this?!
Asha runs and enters the electrical room of the hospital where Grimcutty grabs her. She stabs it dozens of times causing it to fall to the ground. As Asha starts to walk away, it gets back up, wipes its knife on its wounds, and licks up its own blood. Gross and proves nothing.
Amir shows up and asks her to put down the scissors. The Grimcutty grabs Asha pushes her against the walls and tries to force herself to stab herself with the scissors. Amir can’t see the Grimcutty but runs to Asha as she is able to push away the Grimcutty and accidentally stabs her dad in the stomach.
Asha runs outside, realizes what she did, and stops. Her dad exits the building clutching his side and uncaps the syringe so he can inject Asha. As she sees the Grimcutty approaching her, Asha closes her eyes and accepts her fate.
The Grimcutty lifts her into the air which completely blows his cover and Amir finally realizes what’s going on. I’m not sure how he puts it all together but he injects himself with the sedative to take away the Grimcutty’s power. The Grimcutty disappears and Asha falls to the ground as Amir also falls to the ground.
We cut to a 3-minute ASMR video of Asha answering some fan questions so I turned the subtitles on and muted it because I’m not listening to that shit. We see a montage of scenes where we find out Melinda is alive and has been arrested, Cassidy is still alive, and Amir is still alive.
The film ends as Asha points out that the Grimcutty could come back as Melinda didn’t start it, she only heard about it and blogged about it.
Review:
Grimcutty is not good and borders on bad. The acting by the main family isn’t bad but it gets annoying when they start overacting because their characters are succumbing to the hysteria. I think that’s mainly a script issue and not an acting issue.
Grimcutty’s design starts creepy and then gets pretty bad. The CGI is so obvious and it doesn’t blend well with the background and lighting that it detracts from the horror. The mask also gets bigger as the movie goes to the point where it completely loses its horror. They should’ve just kept it as a guy in a mask.
The actual story is where the movie falls apart. It delivers its main message of how mass hysteria is dangerous in a non-effective way. Half the time you’re wondering if Grimcutty can infect parents since Amir is acting completely irrational and we only see this happen to him and Melinda. Grimcutty is supposedly affecting most of the kids at the school so why do we only see Melinda and Amir acting completely overprotective? Where’s the “Evil Dies Tonight” mob?
There are also way too many leaps in logic in this movie. Why did Leah randomly start believing Asha and lying to Amir in the hospital? Why did Leah and Amir bring Kamran’s laptop to the hospital? How did Amir and Leah know where the party was? If Grimcutty is cutting teens, but not killing them immediately, why aren’t there more reports of kids saying they saw him after being injured? Grimcutty can appear out of nowhere so why didn’t it kill Brandon? It shouldn’t have mattered that he was locked in a closet as Melinda was still clearly worried about it.
Grimcutty’s rules also don’t make a lot of sense. Grimcutty has his own knife that he cuts teens with so why did he choke Kamran instead of cutting him? Grimcutty attacks Asha and Brandon while an adult is watching, so why doesn’t he attack Kamran in the hospital when he showed up behind Amir?
The main problem with this movie is that its inciting incident is just dumb. In order for the “hysteria is dangerous” theme to happen, we have to sit through the awful “internet challenge” part and everyone inherently knows that internet challenges are stupid. Anytime there’s an internet challenge hysteria, it’s mainly blown out of proportion by the media.
The majority of the population knows they’re dumb and that no one is actually doing them so when the majority of the population watches the start of this movie you’re instantly annoyed. Then some people might be annoyed by the “technology bad” reaction of the parents and the reactions of the children. Before the movie gets to its main message, you’re annoyed by so many things that a lot of people won’t even stick around for its actual message which is a good one.
Overall I don’t recommend giving Grimcutty a watch. It’s just too annoying before it gets good and although it has a good message, it marinates in bad messages for too long. Also, that ASMR bullshit at the beginning and end can fuck right off, but that’s just me.
Cast IMDB
Stuff to Ignore
Rotten Tomatoes – 0% This will probably change
Metacritic – No Score Yet – This will probably change