Match (2025)
The Horrors of Online Dating
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Anyone who’s tried online dating knows how frustrating, stressful, and downright depressing it can be, but most of us don’t have the extreme misfortune of the protagonist in Match, whose dream date turns into a grotesque nightmare.
Paola (Humberly González) has recently broken up with her boyfriend. Like millions of singles, she turns to online dating apps to reignite her love life. Paola matches with a handsome dude named Henry. After exchanging several messages, and a brief video chat, Paola agrees to meet Henry at his house for dinner.
Her sister tells her that it’s a bad idea, but Paola counters that she needs to take risks and do something crazy in order to meet someone new.
After arriving at Henry’s house, she is greeted by his eccentric mother, Lucille (Dianne Simpson), who tells her that Henry (Jacques Adriannse) is away, but will be back soon. The red flags should be waving at this point, but Paola blithely sits down at the kitchen table, accepts a drink from Lucille, and slowly loses consciousness. What follows is a descent into grotesque insanity.
This is the second Tubi Original horror movie I’ve reviewed after the much more kid-friendly R. L. Stine’s Pumpkinhead. Match is more extreme than I expected. Honestly, I’m a little late on this one – it came out in October and built up social media buzz due to a couple of gruesome and perverted sequences that I won’t spoil here.
Not a conventional Dating Horror Flick
The typical dating horror movie is about somebody getting catfished and/or discovering that their dream guy/girl is a psychopathic stalker. Match is different. It owes its inspiration to movies like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes, and the notorious 1980 exploitation flick Mother’s Day.
Stop here if you don’t want to know any more plot details. Lucille and her family lure women to their house under false pretenses. I won’t spoil their specific motivations, but the young ladies usually end up dead. It becomes clear that this mother-son duo has already victimized several women before Paola, and it’s hard to conceive how they’ve been able to get away with it.
After all, they’re giving these ladies their real home address, which is located in a suburban neighborhood. Surely at least some of these women would have told family members or friends where they were going? How have the police never investigated the home? It’s not like Lucille and Henry live in anonymous isolation like the Sawyers in Texas Chainsaw.
Match has plenty of twists. The third act seems set up to provide a reasonably upbeat conclusion, but the ending is darker than I expected. I respect a movie that doesn’t take the easy way out, and there was one scene in particular that genuinely made me feel sick. That’s not easy to do when you’ve seen as many horror films as I have.
This movie has plenty of positive attributes, but it falls short in some areas. Paola is cute and fairly likeable, but she’s also pretty damn stupid. I’m sure that 99.9% of people would have either declined Henry’s offer or would at least have gotten the hell out of there after meeting crazy Lucille.
It’s hard to fully empathize with a character that makes so many dumb mistakes. It’s surprising that Danishka Esterhazy, a director known for including feminist themes in her work, would make her protagonist so dumb.
Also, the villains are caricatures. Henry and Lucille are the same prototypes we’ve seen in countless horror movies. The domineering mother and the crazed mama’s boy have been genre archetypes since Psycho. These people feel very familiar, which lessens their ability to be scary.
Rating
Match is free to watch on Tubi and is only about 100 minutes long (not counting the ads). It won’t blow your mind, but it’s a decent option if you’re a fan of this type of movie.
Rating from 1 (avoid at all costs) to 10 (masterpiece): 6.5
Where to stream Match (2025):
