Grimcutty

Grimcutty is what happens when your parents’ Facebook panic posts get a movie deal.

It’s allegedly a horror film about an internet meme come to life. In practice, it’s more like a 90-minute “DON’T BELIEVE EVERYTHING YOU READ ONLINE” PowerPoint presentation, except the PowerPoint is shaped like a tall, gray, badly-CGI’d creepypasta with scoliosis and an underbite.

Moral Panic: The Movie

The film is “inspired” by the Momo Challenge hoax, which is already a red flag. Making a horror movie out of a thing that we all now know was fake is like making a disaster movie about Y2K in 2022. The time to be terrified has passed; all that’s left is embarrassment and memes.

Instead of using that premise to do something clever or satirical, Grimcutty decides to take it all extremely, painfully seriously. Parents are freaking out about some vague online challenge that supposedly makes kids hurt themselves. They read one clickbait article, scroll through some posts, and immediately transform into an army of shrill PSAs in human form.

And then the movie’s big twist: the more the parents panic, the more the Grimcutty becomes real.

Which is actually not a terrible idea! Weaponized anxiety! Manifested fear! A demon powered by Facebook comment sections!

Unfortunately, the execution is less “smart metaphor” and more “extended episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? written by a guidance counselor.”

Meet Grimcutty: Your Edgelord Slenderman Cousin

Let’s talk about the monster. Grimcutty looks like someone fed “creepypasta design” into a free asset generator and then clicked “Yes” on every slider. He’s tall. He’s gray. He’s got big, dead eyes, a stretched mouth, and the body language of a middle-schooler trying to be edgy in a Hot Topic trench coat.

In theory, he’s supposed to be nightmare fuel. In practice, every time he lumbers on screen, he looks like he’s about to drop his debut album on SoundCloud. The CGI is, charitably, not helping. He never feels like he’s in the same physical space as the actors. He’s like a pop-up ad that learned how to walk.

Worse, the film never really gives him a personality. No twisted logic, no interesting rules, no mythos beyond “parents think he’s bad and therefore he exists.” He shows up, slashes, growls, runs around like an overcaffeinated Muppet, and then disappears. You could replace him with a floating red “LOW SELF-ESTEEM” text bubble and the plot would barely change.

Asha vs. The Plot (And Her Parents)

Our protagonist is Asha (Sara Wolfkind), a teenager who does ASMR videos and wants some independence. This, in the eyes of the film’s parents, is apparently one handshake away from joining a murder cult. Her parents—Leah (Shannyn Sossamon) and Amir (Usman Ally)—are perpetually locked in that special mode of Parenting By Fear: no listening, no trust, just Wi-Fi controls and shouting.

When the Grimcutty starts physically attacking Asha and her little brother Kamran, what do the parents see? Their kids cutting themselves. Because, in this world, whenever Grimcutty slashes a kid, the parents only see self-inflicted wounds. Subtlety, thy name is not Grimcutty.

There’s a potentially powerful concept there: parents so convinced the internet is destroying their children that they literally cannot see the real problem. But instead of exploring that with nuance, the film just keeps looping the same argument:

Asha: “It’s not me! It’s real! It’s Grimcutty!”
Parents: “No more phones. Also, it’s obviously you.”
Grimcutty: gurgling noises in the background

This exchange repeats enough times that you start to wonder if the real horror is being stuck in this house with these people.

Parents: Powered by Clickbait, Immune to Logic

Amir and Leah deserve their own section in whatever textbook eventually gets written about “How Not to Write Adults in Horror.” These are not people. These are personified Nextdoor posts.

They read one alarming article, watch one hysterical vlog, and instantly go from “we’re concerned” to “confiscate every device, cancel all social interaction, and speak to our children only in hysterical accusations.”

The film desperately wants to say something about generational distrust and cultural pressure. Amir and Leah are immigrant parents trying to navigate parenting in a digital age. That could have been fascinating. Instead, their scenes play like a string of “How do you do, fellow teens?” moments in reverse.

They never sit down and actually try to understand their kids. They just shriek “THE INTERNET!” and double down on the panic. At some point, you stop sympathizing with them and start wondering if Grimcutty is just doing some violent, poorly rendered social work.

The Grimcutty Mechanic: Great Idea, Clumsy Execution

The central mechanic—parents’ fear literally empowering the monster—is genuinely smart… in theory. The more they obsessively talk about Grimcutty, the stronger it becomes, and the more he can harm their kids.

That’s a perfect metaphor for moral panics: adults spiraling over a boogeyman narrative, giving it power, and somehow making everything worse. It could’ve been a razor-sharp commentary on how we pathologize teen behavior instead of addressing real issues like mental health or communication.

Instead, Grimcutty explains its own metaphor to you like three times, just in case you missed it, then beats it into the ground. Characters literally say things like “The fear is what feeds it!” and “You have to stop believing in it!” which would be fine once. Or twice. But by the fourth or fifth time, it starts to feel like an after-school special with a jumpscare budget.

Horror on Training Wheels

Structurally, the film plays things embarrassingly safe. We get all the standard moves:

• Distracted parent ignoring a kid’s clearly urgent plea? Check.

• Principal who thinks it’s just acting out? Check.

• “I’m not crazy, you have to believe me!” hallway scene? Check.

• Monster slowly crawling across the ceiling like it saw Hereditary once? Absolutely.

But there’s no escalation in terror, no sense that the situation is spiraling into something truly unmanageable. Each Grimcutty encounter feels like a slightly remix of the last: he chases Asha or Kamran, they scream, the parents misinterpret it, repeat.

By the time the climax rolls around, you’re less frightened and more exhausted. Yes, there’s a final confrontation. Yes, it involves sort of understanding the origin of the meme and confronting the original fear. No, it does not feel remotely satisfying.

The Supporting Cast: Exposition With Faces

Everyone else in the story exists mainly as a walking plot device. Melinda Jaynes (Alona Tal) is the mom who originally started the Grimcutty post, the patient zero of this chaos, and the film treats her like a living TED Talk about how not to cope with your child’s issues. Her whole deal is “I panicked so hard I summoned a demon,” which, honestly, is on brand.

Kamran, Asha’s little brother, exists to be in peril and occasionally help with Laptop Research. Asha’s best friend Emily pops in long enough to remind us Asha has a life outside of this mess, then gets swallowed by the script’s tunnel vision on The Meme and The Parents.

Nobody feels like they have an inner life beyond the plot. Which is extra tragic in a movie that’s allegedly about kids not being understood.

The Real Grimcutty Was the Runtime We Endured

In the end, Grimcutty is less “scary horror film” and more “mildly annoying cautionary tale with a goofy CGI mascot.” It wants to warn us about the dangers of internet hysteria and parental overreaction, but it does so with all the grace of a chain email from 2007.

It’s not totally incompetent—there are a few okay suspense moments, and Sara Wolfkind tries hard to sell Asha as a real teen caught in a stupidly dangerous situation—but the movie never commits to being truly unsettling, clever, or fun. It just sort of… lumbers along, much like its monster.

If you’re morbidly curious, you could throw it on as background noise while scrolling the very social media platforms it demonizes. Honestly, that’s the most appropriate way to experience it: half-watching a film about the horrors of online life while liking memes on your phone and occasionally glancing up to see Grimcutty flailing around like a rejected Fortnite skin.

In the war between the internet and this movie, the internet wins. Easily.