Grimcutty

Our review of the Hulu horror film Grimcutty, directed by John Ross, does not contain spoilers or any significant plot points.

[intense and opposing responses](https://www.popsci.com/story/science/asmr-misophonia-videos/) was an interesting decision, to say the least. And due to some bad CGI, the apparition is anything but scary. The first 20-minutes and the last five were almost unbearable to watch, so I was forced to mute it. So, of course, they decide the most reasonable solution is to remove all devices from their children and place them in a “detox box.” In reality, the Grimcutty is an actual threat to the town’s kids, but not in the way these parents think. It’s a movie about parents who don’t understand the internet, made by people who clearly don’t understand the internet. That is certainly one creative way to divide your audience. But, unlike The Slenderman, Grimcutty comes with a standard-issued creepy face. Soon, all the parents in town start talking to their teenagers about something called “the Grimcutty challenge.” No one seems to know what the challenge actually is, yet the parents are convinced their offspring are engaging in self-harm as part of the mysterious online craze. It’s been the case for at least a decade. The film starts with a mother who locks her child in his bedroom, seemingly to protect him from the Grimcutty. [Hulu](https://readysteadycut.com/category/streaming-service/hulu/)’s Grimcutty is a horror film written and directed by John Ross (mostly known for short features such as [Things are Really Insane](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2302927/?ref_=nm_knf_t1)). Overprotective parents, Amir and Leah, implemented “phone-free family outings” after their teenage daughter, Asha, quit the track team so she can pursue the glamorous life of an ASMR content creator.

"Grimcutty" stars Sara Wolfkind and Uzman Ally, and writer/director John Ross discuss the themes of the internet themed horror movie.

"It was just really fun with the monster." "My parents are always like, 'Oh, are you doing this on the Instagram?'" Wolfkind said. "It's a whole other art form I could never do." "You're worried that in five or 10 years, it's going to be horribly dated," Ross said. "You feel this tendency to overprotect because there is such a big, scary world out there," Ally said. Grimcutty feeds off the parents' worry, so when one parent's story goes viral, it makes other parents inadvertently empower Grimcutty with their fears.

GRIMCUTTY on Hulu is a new horror movie about a scary Internet meme – a horror mystery that works surprisingly well. Full Movie Review >

However, he also worked on the [Don’t Watch This horror mini-series](https://www.heavenofhorror.com/reviews/dont-watch-this-2018-netflix-short-films/) as well as 1 Minute Horror, Bite Size Horror, and [Bite Size Halloween](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt21335916/). In this modern creature feature, a scary internet meme called “Grimcutty” stirs up panic amongst all the parents in town, convinced it’s making their kids harm themselves and others. [Shannyn Sossamon](https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0815370/), Usman Ally, and Alona Tal. Thus helping to spread the message and make it grow larger and stronger. He also wrote and directed the sci-fi mystery Freaky Faron in 2006, but other than this, he tends to work on short films and TV series. And the people talking about it are not the kids, who seem to otherwise be affected by it. Both are based on Internet memes (of the creepypasta kind), they are supernatural beings with long limbs and they come for children and teenagers. This entity has a huge head with a smile that seems to stretch from ear to ear in a menacing way. To me, this Hulu horror movie works much better due to the added element of social commentary, which works remarkably well. Subjectively speaking, the story was severely lacking and it had neither lessons nor entertainment value of any kind. GRIMCUTTY on Hulu is a new horror movie about a scary Internet meme – not unlike Slenderman. GRIMCUTTY is a new Hulu horror movie being released this month of Halloween.

ComingSoon spoke with director John William Ross, lead actress Sara Wolfkind, and lead actor Usman Ally about Hulu's upcoming horror film Grimcutty.

What was it like to play so many different sides of a character as they developed? So I think spending a lot of time online and on social media can fill people with a lot of anxiety and tension. I don’t know, if it’s really afflicting you as a person, I would try to uncover what’s happening. parents were kind of freaking out about it and kids were just like, “Huh, what is it?” That was just ripe for satire, and there were just so many possibilities for commentary in there that I just dove in. Usman, I thought you just did such a really good job of capturing that and conveying that emotionally on screen. And to always know that even though, at the end of the day, you’re in a movie that has this giant monster or this creature, that you can still find these real potent moments of truth that exist within the character and how they relate to each other. I feel like, as any person, you would try to … And that fear turns into a level of paranoia that is almost like — I kept coming back to this on set — that it’s almost like an affliction, you know? Definitely during the pandemic, I was being stressed out and I did a social media detox for myself. I just auditioned for it like any other audition, but I saw the name, I was like, “Huh, okay.” And I read the sides, [but] I didn’t get the whole script yet, and I really connected with the character Asha. Once I got more of what was happening in it, I was like, “Wow, this is really interesting. “When a real-life version of Grimcutty starts attacking teen Asha Chaudry, her parents believe that she’s cutting herself as part of a challenge.

The Gist: In Grimcutty, it will become the task of high schooler Asha (Sara Wolfkind) and her brainy little brother Kamran (Callan Farris) to save ...

It’s also to Grimcutty’s credit that its cast of young actors are uniformly adept at making the kids and their world as it exists underneath and around the margins of parental guardrails the most interesting thing in the film. But there is some chilling suspense in watching its hulking form – spindly legs and arms, bulbous and enormous head; sometimes, Grimcutty resembles Felonious Gru crossed with It – move through the chaotic space of a beery high school party in pursuit of Asha, a hulking form that only she can see. Also riffing on that idea, and also becoming a better and scarier film than either Grim or Slender in the process, is the consistently underrated [Empty Man](https://decider.com/movie/the-empty-man/) from 2020. With the help of Kamran and her new friend Cassidy (Tate Moore), a loner girl from school who follows her ASMR-themed YouTube channel, Asha manages to link the both the spread of Grimcutty’s influence and the bizarre wellness speak their parents spout – “Reclaim my focus game and cut my screen time in the meantime” – back to Melinda the mommy blogger, who by now has built a locked and padded cell for her little boy. The Gist: In Grimcutty, it will become the task of high schooler Asha (Sara Wolfkind) and her brainy little brother Kamran (Callan Farris) to save themselves and their fellow area young people from an epidemic of mass hysteria that’s infected parents and school administrators, the same hysteria that has fueled the emergence of an evil being who manipulates kids into inducing harm. But what the parents heard was “My child’s internet and social media activity and unhealthy reliance on screen time is causing a rash of local stabbings.” [GRIMCUTTY](https://decider.com/movie/grimcutty/): STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

After that we meet our main characters, Asha Chaudhry (Sara Wolfkind, Love All You Have Left, Kid Fix), her younger brother Kamran (Callan Farris, Kings, The ...

The parents, most of whom act like they’ve never been on the internet in their lives, are like cardboard cutouts and the film’s one somewhat interesting character, a rival YouTuber named Cassidy (Tate Moore, The Surrogate, Stood Up) is quickly sidelined. Her parents don’t believe her and accuse her of cutting herself as part of the challenge. That makes sense, locking all of the family’s laptops and phones in a “Detox Box” on the other hand is ridiculous. Unfortunately, after Asha gets attacked by Grimcutty the film manages to make the creature’s existence the most believable thing in the script. Asha has recently quit the track team to devote her time to creating [ASMR videos](https://www.vox.com/2015/7/15/8965393/asmr-video-youtube-autonomous-sensory-meridian-response). As he makes his way downstairs and gets a knife a half-glimpsed figure, Grimcutty (Joel Ezra Hebner,

Mike Celestino, Laughing Place: As a movie fan, I've always felt like you were more into action movies, but as a filmmaker you tend to lean toward horror as a ...

I think her score did that, and it was a really great experience to work with her. She was recommended to me, and she did a demo for the first sequence of the movie. I knew that I wanted him to be big and tall, and I knew that we did not have much of a VFX budget at all. Ross: Well, I worked with Bridger on The Birch season one, so it was kind of like a warm blanket to have him around on the set, because I knew that everything would be handled. I think it’s a lot more complicated than that, but I definitely tried to get as much of a sense of that as I could, because I was writing teenage characters, and I wanted teenage audience members to feel like they’re being listened to. So I did a sketch of it with the help of a horror filmmaker friend of mine, and then when the project was greenlit we worked on the design some more to try and make it scarier. I read a lot of articles [and] I listened to a lot of podcasts. Ross: I would say if you want to watch a movie where you can just make some popcorn, sit down on the couch for 90 minutes, and feel like you got your fun October movie fix, then this is the movie for you. But I think what struck me about it was the disconnect between what parents thought it was and what kids thought it was. It’s terrifying in the way that I was trying to achieve from the beginning, and I knew when I finished that short film, I was like, ‘Oh, this is awesome.’ So I hope that people go check that out. I did a whole bunch of short-form content for Crypt TV, I did a short for Awesomeness TV, and I did a short for Bite Size Horror [called] Gregory, which led to this project. What is it about horror that appeals to you as a writer and a director?