Panic Fest 2025 Review: DOOBA DOOBA, A Cult Classic in the Making
Dooba Dooba isn't really a "found footage" movie as much as it's a "presented footage" movie.
The film's first image is the flat blue of a VCR screen before it shifts to static and the movie proper begins with a combination of presidential photos, military band footage, and spooky shots of the home where the narrative will play out. Then, if there were any doubts that this was curated footage, the opening credits inform viewers that the film was directed by and stars Monroe Jefferson (Betsy Sligh), the sixteen year old girl whose need for a babysitter is the initial premise of the film.
Monroe's brother was killed next to her in the room they shared when she was a child, leaving her traumatized and severely anxious. Her anxiety means she can never be alone and whoever is in the house with her must constantly repeat "dooba dooba" so she knows the footsteps she hears are someone friendly. It also offers the in-universe explanation for the cameras placed in every nook and cranny of the home.
Things get off to an immediately uncomfortable start when babysitter Amna (Amna Vegha) arrives to frantic parents, mom Taylor (Erin O'Meara) and dad Wilson (Winston Haynes), explaining Monroe's history and trying to get off to their evening's party as quickly as possible. But it's not just nervous energy or awkwardness about communicating a deeply personal tragedy, there's something off about these people, especially Wilson who has an outburst about "these ethnic names" when Taylor corrects him on Amna's name.
The outburst is underscored with a sharp screech and distortion of the image, a trick deployed several times throughout the course of the movie that only grows more frequent once the parents leave Amna alone with Monroe. It's one of several formal flourishes writer/director Ehrland Hollingsworth uses to engage and unnerve viewers, simultaneously keeping the visual language of the film exciting and ever-so-slightly off-putting.
Still images interject often; at one point, text is added on top of a series of stills to function as subtitles for a perfectly audible phone conversation. Regular cuts to various other things, including an archival footage educational video about children adjusting to the difficulties of independent life and a PowerPoint alternating between slides about President James Monroe and Jeffrey Dahmer, give the movie a creepypasta feel.
For the most part, Dooba Dooba plays on a social sense that something is wrong, as our protagonist refuses to acknowledge it or actively seeks to push it away with kindness. It's almost akin to the original Speak No Evil, as Amna does her best to have a good time with Monroe, while the teen hides behind her awkwardness to be cruel about Amna's music and forces a "truth or dare" game that inevitably goes awry. Unlike Speak No Evil, however, the aggressiveness of Dooba Dooba's form and its frequent cuts to other footage add a more abstract dread, the kind built when there's an incorporeal, almost all-consuming evil that feels inescapable.
And the film isn't coy about that evil. Much of the non-narrative footage centers on America's Presidents. Every member of the Jefferson family, who already share a founding father's name, has a first name taken from a U.S. President, a fact that Monroe calls out as "fun" with Amna. There are multiple references to reparations, which the Jeffersons accidentally(?) call "retributions." All this leads Dooba Dooba to read as an expression of the undying American evil of foundational institutional racism.
Which is exactly why when the film does take a turn for the outwardly horrific in its final third, it's so disturbing. Beyond the terror of this specific white girl toying with this specific brown woman, which to be clear is plenty upsetting on its own, the film points to the physical and psychological cruelty the white ruling class has exhibited towards people of color in this nation since before its founding.
Dooba Dooba is something truly special: an inventive and thrilling found footage movie that proves the sub-genre still has room for formal growth and one of the most deeply troubling horror movies of the last decade.
