What She Doesn’t Know (2025) Movie Review: A Dull Attempt at Slasher Subversion

“What She Doesn’t Know” is the latest film from horror filmmaker Juan Pablo Arias Munoz. It follows a trio of high schoolers, spending one last summer together before moving away to uni, all while a serial killer is on the loose, targeting their classmates one by one. The film is led by Siena Agudong, who plays Indy, a soon-to-be college freshman reeling from the suicide of her sister, struggling with the weight of the world around her.

Alongside Indy is Brynn (Jessica Belkin), Indy’s mean girl best friend, who lives alone in a huge, spacious mansion, and Jordan (Conor Husting), the guy friend of both Indy and Brynn. The film opens with arguably the most generic slasher sequence you can imagine, where we see Molly (a classmate of our protagonist) wander around her empty suburban house on the phone with a mysterious and dangerous person.

She states that she will not be “Drew Barrymored”, a nod to the “Scream” franchise and its famous red herring. Before swiftly being killed off, the reveal is possibly the most obvious thing you could imagine. If you’ve seen any slasher film before, you’ve seen this exact sequence, and in “What She Doesn’t Know,” it’s done in the most dull way imaginable. The film’s attempt to satirize itself by referencing the “Scream” films rings as an empty attempt for a film to have its cake and eat it.

The rest of the film takes place in Brynn’s huge modern mansion, as we see our trio just lounge around and act mildly shocked at the death of another classmate. There’s an irony to the character writing; they host an anti-prom party to show that they are, in fact, outsiders, not in line with the crowd. This would work if the characters weren’t all so incredibly generic and one-note. To the point where the character of Jordan has no discernible character trait apart from the fact that he likes food and has a crush on Indy.

Brynn’s character is probably the most developed out of the three, but is given some of the worst dialogue you can imagine, which renders her as a predictable one-note character. Rounding out the ensemble is a bit of stunt casting in the form of Denise Richards, who again is just reduced to a predictable red herring caricature. Frankly, the inclusion of her character just felt like an excuse to do some stunt casting to ensure the film had a better chance of distribution for festivals.

What She Doesn’t Know (2025) — A still from “What She Doesn’t Know” (2025)

For a horror film, this is pretty weak on scares. The film struggles to build much tension or atmosphere, as we are often reminded how safe and secure they are, and how far away they are from any real threat, apart from Denise Richards’ red herring. This also ensures that the big twist reveal feels both baffling and obvious. The twist is something you can see coming a mile away, and it’s shockingly bad. The whole third act has the audience more or less waiting for the obvious to be stated and then sitting in confusion at how poorly executed it is.

The whole experience is excruciatingly dull; the ninety-six-minute run time moves at a snail’s pace and lacks any meat or bite to it. Just dead air. When the film isn’t trying to be an empty slasher or a tepid teen drama, it switches into commentary about chasing perfection, beauty standards, and the debilitating effects those can have on women.

A lot of this is done through intercutting scenes with a few fake 70s/80s styled infomercials starring the same housewife, her condition getting worse and worse. They beat the audience over the head again and again with a message that feels so incredibly tacked on, handled with no tact or weight. A dreadful attempt at convincing the audience that such a hollow film has something to say.

If one were to point to redeeming elements of the film, it would probably be the main cast’s noble efforts to turn in a half-decent performance despite the ill-advised directing and cliche-ridden script. While the film is as interesting as any old teen drama you’d see on Netflix, there were some inspired uses of wides that I thought were fairly creative. The film doesn’t look bad per se, just incredibly uninspired in its use of filmmaking as a way to evoke any sense of dread or stir any emotion for that fact.

There’s an irony to “What She Doesn’t Know,” this weak overarching theme of the dangers of perfection baked into a film that feels so haphazard and slapped together. A film so dead on subverting the conventional slasher film that it forgets that subversion only works if it’s engaging. The risk can’t be respected if it’s terribly executed. I’m sure there’s a unique film in here somewhere, but perhaps the filmmakers should have taken a note from its characters and chased higher standards.