Screamfest 2025 Review: “Dooba Dooba” – Original & Spine-Tingling!!

When one steps inside a stranger’s family home they are entering into the past and present of a stranger’s world that hides just as much as what is seen within. It is like stepping inside a storybook midway through trusting that its characters are just like what you’d anticipate and the story matches expectations.

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Dooba Dooba, a footage based horror film directed by Ehrland Hollingsworth, opens with Amna (Amna Vegha) arriving at Wilson (Winston Haynes) and Taylor’s (Erin O’Meara) home ready to babysit their sixteen year old daughter Monroe (Betsy Sligh) for the night. After being told Monroe suffers from heavy anxiety due to the tragic murder of her brother in his own room, Amna treads lightly only to be surprised by how talkative and open Monroe is. It isn’t until too late that Amna begins to realize Monroe may be a little more calculated than she appears to be.

​Dooba Dooba instantly grabs its audience due to its disorienting nature beginning with film clips and text writing in conjunction with security footage of the house the film is set in. The feeling that it is being created by a high schooler for a “final project” allows its audience to embrace its unnerving approach. As Monroe opens up to Amna about her family, how all of them are named after presidents, and various tidbits of American history, it becomes evident that Dooba Dooba’s central theme is regarding monitoring and surveillance of the American people by those higher up and how it relates to its implementation by the Bush administration.

In an unsettling and creepy way Dooba Dooba does a good job of displaying the idea of being watched within your home and how the things one may see as a result are not within the traditions of a “well adjusted American family.” Devastating revelations will come to light in the wake of security being owned by the government, and some of that being things we wish we didn’t know about.

Dooba Dooba plays by its own set of rules in its filmmaking and direction. What appears to be a film that will play out through the family’s home security footage is quickly altered to include real time close ups. POV angles, along with its home cameras. This heightens the tension when characters begin to open up and things go awry to display the intent of the person behind the camera switching between characters’ point of views.

The play on the phrase in the film “Dooba Dooba” works well to further its idea of family’s having unique qualities and possessing unconventional “rules,” this one being where everyone in the house must walk through it saying the phrase to let Monroe know that someone she trusts is walking the halls as opposed to a murderer. It is reminiscent of going over to a new friend’s house and discovering that they do not operate the way your family does and they have their own little “quirks.”

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Dooba Dooba takes “found footage” and plays around with it in a way that makes it feel like it is intended footage being created rather than found. It is just unconventional enough to intrigue audiences even if the large themes it is addressing could have been a little more well rounded.

‘Dooba Dooba’ Rating – 3.5/5