The Trouble With Truth Is What It Costs

TV SERIES REVIEW
The Trouble with Tessa (first two episodes)
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Genre: Adventure, Drama, Thriller
Year Released: 2025
Runtime: 1h 26m
Director(s): W.M. Weikart
Writer(s): W.M. Weikart, Andrew Rivas
Cast: Michal Thomas Santos, Danielle Meyer, Greg Baldwin, Ken Belsky, Roberta De Santis, Brianne Buishas, Jaden Hoff, Victor Amaya, Haley Hoffmeister, Ryan Addison, J.A. Ruiz
Where to Watch: available now on Prime Video here: www.amazon.com

RAVING REVIEW: THE TROUBLE WITH TESSA opens with the eerie quiet of a town that looks just a little too polished. A porch, a welcome, and the kind of friendliness that feels rehearsed. That’s what greets Tessa Fowler—a former documentarian whose credibility is in shambles—when she moves to Lowery looking for peace. What she finds is a half-buried history and a chilling sense that the people around her are playing roles in a much older script.

This new Screambox original series uses its modest runtime wisely. With just over 20 minutes per episode, the premiere double-header sets up something that feels much larger than its format implies. Rather than racing through exposition or leaning on overused jump scares, it builds tension the way a good mystery should: by giving you just enough to keep pulling the thread, even when you know what you might find on the other end could be dangerous.

At the center of it all is Katrin Nugent’s performance as Tessa. There's something jagged in the way she moves through scenes—like someone still getting used to the shape of their guilt. Tessa isn’t chasing redemption for the camera. She’s searching because she can’t help herself, and Nugent makes her compulsions feel both authentic and troubling. She's the type of protagonist who doesn't need to win you over—she just needs to feel real. And she does.

What makes the early episodes stand out is how confidently they let silence and atmosphere do the heavy lifting. There’s a palpable tension in Lowery, but it's not because anything overtly supernatural has happened (yet). It's in the way people look too long, or avoid looking at all. The camera is lingering on old wallpaper, in the brittle smiles from neighbors who seem a little too invested in Tessa’s past. This isn’t horror screaming for your attention. It’s whispering, which can be even more unsettling.

The premise is nothing new. But THE TROUBLE WITH TESSA doesn't treat it like a gimmick. Instead, the recordings that are found are handled with a level of restraint and purpose that feels earned. We only see fragments, and the editing leaves plenty of room for doubt. Are we witnessing a crime? A prank? A staged event? The show doesn’t rush to clarify, and that ambiguity becomes its strongest asset. It’s a mystery that isn’t interested in clean answers.

That said, the show walks a delicate line, and it's not always perfectly balanced. Tessa’s backstory—a disgraced journalist, now chasing down a story no one asked her to tell—could easily slip into cliché, and there are moments where the writing teeters dangerously close to that. But what saves it is the sincerity of the execution.

Dennis Cahlo and Bethany Watson (who both write and direct) clearly understand the core of tension. Their use of the VHS aesthetic isn’t a retro flex—it’s woven into the fabric of the structure. These tapes aren’t just props. They represent a different kind of storytelling, one not made for streaming, but for secrecy. The pacing is deliberate, though that might test some viewers expecting high-octane scares. But it’s a welcome change from horror that confuses volume with impact. THE TROUBLE WITH TESSA aims for a creeping discomfort that settles in slowly and lingers afterward. It doesn’t ask “What’s in the basement?” so much as “Why was it hidden in the first place?”

Visually, the series is stripped-down but effective. Most of it takes place in plain houses, dim hallways, and staring at flickering monitors. This simplicity works in its favor, grounding the story in a world that feels familiar, one where horror could plausibly unfold without anyone noticing. The low-budget approach isn’t a limitation. It’s a stylistic choice that matches the narrative’s scale.

There are hints that the series will eventually reveal something more grotesque or surreal. That’s really what keeps you hooked; it’s refreshing to watch a horror series that doesn't immediately resort to body horror or demonic possession as its escalation point. The dread here comes from the slow realization that something about Lowery is deeply wrong, and no one seems to be doing anything about it. Or worse—they already know and don’t care.

As a character study, the show shows early promise in how it frames Tessa’s need for control as both her strength and her downfall. Her obsession with truth isn’t heroic—it’s compulsive, maybe even selfish. And that’s an angle more horror shows could stand to explore. What if the person demanding answers isn’t doing it for justice, but because they can’t live without a story to chase?

Only the first two episodes have been available to screen so far, but if the rest of the series can maintain this level of restraint and tension, THE TROUBLE WITH TESSA may be something truly special. And if that’s where the story is heading—if Tessa’s digging only reveals a town that prefers its ghosts undisturbed—then the real trouble with Tessa may not be what she finds… but that she was ever allowed to look.

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