Unnamed Footage Festival 2025: ‘Dooba Dooba’ delivers demented dread

The thing about found footage is that it’s unlike any other genre. You have room to play, experiment, and dabble. While other genres are more tightly confined in style and tone, found footage allows—no, dares—you to push the limit and stretch boundaries until they snap off in your eyes. Any found footage fiend will tell you that the trick to a compelling story is a filmmaker’s ability to deliver thrills and chills with very few resources. From The Blair Witch Project to #MissingCouple, many genre favorites prove that a healthy mix of scares works best to conjure up terrible frights. Ehrland Hollingsworth clearly understands the assignment with his new feature, Dooba Dooba, playing this year’s Unnamed Footage Festival.

An aspiring pop singer, Amna (Amna Vegha) could use some extra cash, so she answers an ad for a babysitter. When we first meet her, she arrives at the home of a well-meaning, but strange, couple, Taylor (Erin O’Meara) and Wilson (Winston Haynes). They welcome Amna into their home with open arms, and despite an off-putting introduction—when Wilson makes a cringy comment about how to pronounce her name—Amna doesn’t sweat it too much. She brushes off the remarks and gladly agrees to babysit their daughter. But what she comes to realize is that the ward is 16-year-old Monroe (Betsy Sligh), who suffers from PTSD after the murder of her brother Roosevelt many years prior. Monroe is the tortured type. She doesn’t warm up to many people, and when she does, she latches on like a parasite. She’s sweet enough, of course, and requires delicate attention to the rules, including calling out “Dooba Dooba” when the babysitter walks through the house so as not to arouse fear or paranoia. It’s a comfort blanket for Monroe, whose oddball behavior doesn’t necessarily raise any red flags. She’s just a normal teen who happens to have been put through literal hell.

With the parents out for the night, Amna and Monroe acquaint each other with their likes and dislikes, with Monroe even prodding Amna about her music. Monroe speaks her mind, brazenly tearing Amna’s SoundCloud tracks down brick by brick. Amna welcomes the refreshingly honest feedback; it’s rare that those close to an artist actually offer frank opinions about art. Monroe grows increasingly infatuated with Amna, and the two spend a delightful evening together, playing Truth or Dare and cooking dinner together.

Dooba Dooba goes south soon enough. The tension between Amna and Monroe grows thick; you’d need a perfectly sharpened butcher’s knife to slash through it. Monroe likes to test Amna’s boundaries and limits, frequently pushing harder against her babysitter’s resistance. Such a dynamic compels the story forward. The longer we sit within the world Hollingsworth has created, the more uncomfortable it becomes. The balance of power quickly topples in Monroe’s direction. She holds all the cards, and Amna can only succumb to her every whim.

Perched somewhere between Creep and The Ceremony is About to Begin, Dooba Dooba effectively creeps up the backbone. With its scatterbrained exhibit (also featuring real-life footage and jumbled Paint lettering, as though a student presentation), it sprouts from Monroe’s fractured mind and allows further insight into her state of being. It’s equal parts troubling and fascinating. There’s a looming and suffocating dread that rises out of the film’s cracks. Something always feels off, and you can’t put your finger on it. When you least expect it, Hollingsworth punctures the jugular with a disturbing and manic finale that’ll sear itself onto your brain. The deadly conclusion teeters on the edge of madness and silliness, indebted to long-buried secrets and revelations that eventually expose the family’s real intentions. You tune in for the compelling premise, and you stay for the outrageous climax.