Movies
Director Haylie Duff’s ‘I Am Your Biggest Fan’ Is a Predictable But Watchable Kidnapping Thriller [Review]
It’s hard not to think of the Nickelodeon heyday of the early 2000s when watching Lifetime’s I Am Your Biggest Fan, a film that traffics in the usual abduction themes with a ‘reboot’ twist.
Fifteen years ago, Delilah Douglas (Meghan Carrasquillo, last seen in Tubi’s Til Death Do Us Part) was the lead on a bog standard family sitcom called From the Hart. With her days as a tween star far behind her, Delilah is happily teaching high school students about Shakespeare when she gets the call: the sitcom has found new life in the age of streaming and the Hollywood suits have greenlit a contemporary reboot with the original cast reprising their roles.
The problem? Delilah has no interest in going back to acting. As revealed in flashbacks, Delilah’s acting career wasn’t her choice; her actions were being dictated by her emotionally abusive momager (Denise Gossett) who berated her for being exhausted or forgetting her lines.
Naturally Delilah’s decision to decline the offer draws the ire of both hard-core fans, as well as the frustration of several of former co-stars. This includes Cody (Colton Tapp), who played her TV boyfriend Danny, and has been struggling to book more prestigious gigs than anti-fungal foot commercials.
But Internet hatred and annoyed co-workers don’t hold a candle to the real-life threats on Delilah’s safety, which begin with online harassment before escalating to vandalism and threats to her safety. Naturally the cops don’t take her concerns seriously, advising Delilah to move until things cool down. The problem is that she has nowhere to go.
In an ill-advised move of desperation, Delilah accepts the offer of a kindly barista named Ellen (Lauren Cole) that she has recently befriended. The offer: stay a few nights at Ellen’s parents’ remote country home. Never mind the fact that there’s no wifi or cell coverage. What could possibly go wrong?
The biggest challenge plaguing I Am Your Biggest Fan is that there are few, if any, surprises. It’s evident from the start where the danger is coming from and why, so when Delilah winds up drugged and in shackles at the end of the first act, it’s less of a twist than a simple confirmation of our suspicions.
Unlike recent titles such as Trapped in the Spotlight, Murder at the Lighthouse or Trapped in Her Dorm Room, this kidnapping movie never shifts gears beyond its initial conflict. The remainder of the film finds Delilah struggling to retain her composure, negotiate with her captor, and desperately seek out opportunities to escape (which inevitably fail…because that’s how these films work).
Kidnapping films are tricky to execute because they require a constant (re)negotiation of stakes, as well as dynamic actors to guarantee audience investment. While I Am Your Biggest Fan struggles in the first capacity, it is mostly successful on the latter point; Carrasquillo and Cole are both solid and compelling leads (though one wishes that Cole was allowed to go full psychotic).
Alas, Emily Golden’s screenplay is resolutely classy, almost to a fault.
There’s a trashier version of the film that could have leaned into the camp and been much more successful and entertaining. Consider that Delilah is held captive on a recreation of her sitcom set and forced to perform as “Chelsea” in order to guarantee her safety. There’s huge potential in this set-up…but, for the most part, I Am Your Biggest Fan resists exploring any salacious, campy possibilities in favour of playing things straight.
Disappointingly the film also avoids tackling (in a Quiet on Set-esque way) the devastating psychological and social impacts of making and consuming teen content. There are hints of something bigger and deeper, particularly in the scenes in which Delilah-as-Chelsea reenacts dialogue and plot lines from the show. These moments evoke the entitlement and fan service that audiences of legacy sequels and reboots demand. They also hint at the inherent power of watching Chelsea confront and overcome her childhood trauma while living through a fresh round in adulthood.
Unfortunately Golden’s script holds back from truly engaging with this intriguing narrative premise. Instead what we get is a traditional narrative that opts to swing baseball bats and pick handcuffs with bobby pins. It’s not bad, but it is also quite conventional.
Thankfully it’s still extremely watchable – thanks in no small part to its two competent lead performances, as well the expected but still welcome “twists,” and an amusingly over the top action climax (which director Haylie Duff admittedly struggles to stage convincingly).
Ultimately I Am Your Biggest Fan is safe and pat, but the movie still checks all of the boxes for a Lifetime kidnapping flick.
I Am Your Biggest Fan is now available on Lifetime Movie Network.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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