Match (2026)

Tubi has quietly become a wild west for indie horror, a digital bargain bin where you can occasionally find a genuine spark of creativity. Its latest offering, Match, is exactly that. It is a grimy, ambitious, and deeply weird piece of cinema that manages to be memorable even when its seams are showing.

Paola, a single woman fed up with the online dating scene, takes a chance on Henry, who offers to make her a home-cooked meal the night before his father’s heart surgery. Despite her sister Maria’s warning, Paola is drawn in by Henry’s charm, but she soon discovers that he’s not what he seems. As it turns out… spoiler territory coming… Paolo is being catfished by Henry’s manipulative mother, Lucille, who will stop at nothing to get a grandchild of her own from her grotesquely deformed son Henry, using the likeness of Eli.

With its unique blend of horror, domestic drama and a touch of humour, Match is a fairly well trodden tale of a woman’s bid for love ending in a fight for survival from a force of evil. As the body count rises and the stakes grow higher, Paola must confront the true nature of Henry and Lucille, and the horrors that lurk beneath their seemingly innocent facade.

From the opening moments, it’s clear that Match possesses an element that many most obvious jump-scare horrors lack, a centerpiece of the film that is the creature design. In an era of forgettable CGI, the practical makeup effects here are undeniably impressive. There is a textured, fleshy realism to the character of Henry that grounds the horror in a way computer pixels simply cannot.

However, the film falls into a classic indie trap, it’s too proud of its monster. By granting the creature excessive screen time in broad lighting, the mystery evaporates. Practical effects work better in the shadows, where the viewer’s imagination fills in the gaps. Here, because we spend so much time staring at the prosthetics, the illusion eventually falters. You stop seeing a monster and start seeing the incredible (but visible) work of a man in a suit and a talented makeup artist.

The visual identity of Match is its most jarring contradiction. The script seems to call for a “grimy” atmosphere, the kind of icky, lived-in decay we expect from Texas Chainsaw-adjacent horror. Instead, we get something strangely clinical. Rather than shadows and grit, the film is bathed in clean visuals. Match has a couple of tricks up its sleeve, moments scattered throughout to get audience members talking. These moments invariably involve Henry’s manhood and are pretty shocking in an otherwise fairly tame movie.

The production design is puzzling. The “household” feels less like a home and more like an abandoned hotel. The expansive corridors and multitude of sterile, locked doors provide scale, but the story relies on a maze of corridors to allow characters to operate, plot and plan without the antagonists breathing down their neck. It feels less like caged terror and more like a stay in the backrooms.

The film is anchored by a solid lead performance. Humberly González carries the emotional weight of the story with a vulnerability that makes the more absurd elements of the plot feel high-stakes. She is brilliantly countered by Dianne Simpson as Henry’s mother, a performance that is wonderfully eccentric. Jacques Adriaanse gives Henry a believable heft and when needed, adds a little emotion. Shaeane Jimenez keeps things real and shares great chemistry with González.

The film stumbles a bit with a supporting character. While the world is populated by vibrant, lively personalities, the character of Luke Volker’s Eli feels like a missed opportunity, he is written to be a safe and relatable anchor. However, he inadvertently becomes the least interesting person in the film. He lacks the grit or the secrets that make the other characters pop against the film’s weird backdrop. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Natalie, played by Nikita Faber, soaks up every moment on screen with a wildly fun and realistically cookie character.

Danishka Esterhazy would be a director to watch. With Match she knows where to put the camera to capture excitement and uses a few fun tactics to evoke the dizzying state of panic Paola graduates to. With the remake of Slumber Party Massacre and the recently striking The Banana Splits Movie, she has brought a lot of fun to horror over recent years. I now need to check out her other film from 2025, Sniper: The Last Stand, and hope she maintains that surprisingly enjoyable long running series.

Match is a fascinating underdog horror. It lands significant wins with its practical effects and character performances, but it is frequently undermined by production limitations. It is a film for the genre fans, the viewer who values a unique approach over a safe shot. It isn’t perfect, but in a sea of generic streaming horror, its efforts make it well worth a watch on a Friday night.

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