Found footage is, in some ways, the ultimate playground. Everything about the genre feels intimate and in-your-face, often to an almost—or intentionally—uncomfortable degree. It’s the best subgenre there is for encouraging creators to get out and make something weird, no matter the experience or skill level. Almost everything you could possibly need is carried around in most of our pockets on a daily basis. The appeal and access of this subgenre is one of the reasons it remains high on my personal list of favorites. It so often births such wonderfully strange, occasionally borderline indefinable creatures.
So it is with DOOBA DOOBA, a found footage passion project just out of the 2025 Panic Fest. Written and directed by Ehrland Hollingsworth, DOOBA DOOBA is a strange beast. It follows babysitter Amna (Amna Vegha) as she—rather quickly—finds out the babysitting job she agreed to take on for the night is more than she bargained for. Her evening plans? To watch 16-year-old Monroe (Betsy Sligh), an unusual and incredibly traumatized child, overnight and into the morning. Monroe’s parents explain that the reason there are so many cameras around the house is because Monroe needs to feel that her house is under constant observation in order to feel safe as the result of her brother’s horrific fate in the past. Also, just to make sure Monroe knows it’s a safe person walking around, Amna must announce her traversing through the house with “Dooba Dooba”, or else Monroe will melt down. All perfectly reasonable, if highly unusual, requests if it means the mental stability of her charge and the safe passage of a night in a strange house, no?
If that’s not enough to throw you off kilter, don’t worry! Intercut throughout the film are some very disorienting powerpoint-esque slides about US Presidents, serial killers, and some very SKINAMARINK-style text cards, complete with uncomfortable child whispering. DOOBA DOOBA is a very strange film that categorically defies you to describe it in any sensical way without divulging the entire plot. Lest this sound like a criticism, rest assured instead I think it more likely that it’s all in an effort to throw the audience off kilter. It wastes no time at all getting down into the awkwardness at the heart of babysitting the child of people who are quickly revealed to be chronic overshares, yet still not much is as it seems.
There are so many cameras in every conceivable nook and cranny of Monroe’s house—all of which she seems able to clock, no matter how obscure the placement—we’re left feeling stifled. The house itself is so abruptly and strangely laid out it feels like traversing through a labyrinth that actively wants to cut you off. It’s not a perfect film, but it is perfectly good at several things. Namely, Betsy Sligh’s wonderfully unhinged performance as Monroe; the inexplicable shed in the yard; and a surprising undercurrent theme of the relationship between selfishness and sacrifice. Though it takes some digging to get there, to go too much further into that would spoil some of DOOBA DOOBA’s full, strange story. Suffice to say, never take a babysitting job without having the conversation about the charge and the ground rules before stepping foot into a house that seems like it might be a little bit of a suburban cousin to the one from TEXAS CHAIN SAW.
I do hope DOOBA DOOBA is able to find a release deal outside of the festival circuit, mostly because no matter where you land on it, it’s the kind of found footage that feels like a conversation piece you pass around to your friends. To keep it in this loop is to smother its potential as a cult hit it feels a little destined to be.
Tags: Amna Vegha, Betsy Sligh, Dooba Dooba, Ehrland Hollingsworth, Film Festivals, Found-Footage, Joshua Harris, Katelyn Nelson, Panic Fest, Panic Fest 2025, Skinamarink, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
No Comments