A Twisted Love Story Drenched in Blood

Read Time:6 Minute, 49 Second

MOVIE REVIEW
Sick Puppy
–

Genre: Dark Comedy, Thriller, Horror
Year Released: 2025, 2026
Runtime: 1h 45m
Director(s): Jay Reid
Writer(s): Jay Reid
Cast: Natasha Calis, Brett Geddes, Dylan Taylor, Rachel Boyd, Precious Chong, Tony Nappo
Where to Watch: coming to select theaters & digital on May 22, 2026, from Dark Sky Films

RAVING REVIEW: SICK PUPPY understands something a lot of dark comedies miss entirely. Absurdity only works when the people trapped inside it stop recognizing it as absurd. Jay Reid’s film doesn’t treat murder like a punchline dropped into an otherwise normal marriage. It treats it like rot that’s settled so deeply into the foundation of a relationship that it’s begun reshaping the logic of everyone living inside it. Charlie doesn’t see herself as the wife of a monster. She sees herself as someone trying to save a man she loves from the worst parts of himself, the same way another couple might struggle through addiction, anger issues, or self-destruction. That’s what gives the film its edge. Beneath it all sits a disturbingly sincere portrait of emotional denial, where love has become so tangled with rationalization that even serial murder starts feeling like just another obstacle to avoid.

The setup sounds like pure provocation bait. Charlie loves her husband John despite the inconvenient detail that he abducts and murders young women. When he finally agrees to stop killing for her sake, she becomes obsessed with preserving the illusion of their normal suburban future, even as everything around them begins unraveling. The film could’ve easily leaned into cartoonish shock humor or ironic detachment. Instead, Reid treats Charlie’s denial as real, which makes everything work on a different level of insanity.

Natasha Calis ends up carrying most of that balancing act. Charlie can’t just be a punchline; otherwise, the film falls apart. Calis plays her with a kind of exhausted compartmentalization that feels all too believable. Charlie knows her situation is horrific on some level, but she’s spent so long rationalizing it that morality has become a flexible survival mechanism. The performance never asks the audience to sympathize with her actions exactly, but it does force you to understand the logic driving them. That’s where SICK PUPPY becomes more interesting than the average serial killer satire.

Rachel Boyd’s Mia becomes the fracture point around which the entire film pivots. Reid uses her presence almost like a destabilizing force moving through Charlie’s carefully maintained emotional delusion. Without overplaying the character or forcing her into the obvious, Boyd brings a vibe that constantly threatens to expose the fragility of this entire fantasy. There’s something deeply unsettling about the way Mia exists within the story because she doesn’t simply create tension; she forces buried realities back to the surface. Boyd understands that the character works best when she feels less like an outside disruption and more like the living reminder of everything Charlie has spent years trying not to confront. Once that enters the film, the illusion holding everything together begins to develop cracks that never fully close again.

The film isn’t really about murder itself. It’s about complicity. About the terrifying elasticity of human justification inside intimate relationships. Reid keeps returning to the idea that love doesn’t automatically make people better. Sometimes it simply teaches them how to excuse increasingly horrifying behavior more efficiently. Charlie isn’t blind to John’s violence. She’s emotionally invested in believing she can manage it, redirect it, domesticate it into something survivable.

Brett Geddes plays John with exactly the right level of awkward allure. The character works because he doesn’t behave like a psychopath constantly performing menace. In many scenes, he genuinely comes across as a guy trying to be a supportive husband while suppressing impulses he barely understands. That tension creates some of the film’s funniest and most uncomfortable moments. Watching John attempt to be normal through pottery classes and forced restraint becomes unsettling precisely because the movie never lets you forget what he actually is underneath the surface.

The humor throughout SICK PUPPY is vicious but surprisingly controlled. Reid rarely pushes scenes into outright parody. Instead, the comedy usually emerges from emotional dissonance, the gap between how horrifying a situation objectively is and how casually the characters act. Domestic arguments about serial killing get framed with the same emotional beats as ordinary disagreements. That commitment allows the film to sustain its premise far longer than you’d expect.

There’s also an observation underneath the film’s darker material about how people normalize destructive relationships over time. Charlie’s behavior escalates gradually enough that even she barely notices how far she’s drifted. Reid understands that self-justification often happens through tiny compromises rather than giant, dramatic turns. The film becomes increasingly disturbing as Charlie’s transformation becomes increasingly inevitable, long before she realizes it herself.

The supporting cast also helps stabilize the film’s shifting tone. Dylan Taylor and Precious Chong especially bring enough sincerity to their performances that the surrounding absurdity never feels emotionally disconnected from reality. Even secondary characters contribute to the growing sense that Charlie’s carefully maintained fantasy of normalcy is becoming impossible to sustain.

What keeps SICK PUPPY engaging throughout is its commitment to vileness. Reid never turns Charlie into a quirky antihero that audiences are supposed to root for. The movie understands that her loyalty isn’t romantic or admirable. It’s corrosive. Every compromise she makes strips away another layer of moral self-awareness until protecting her marriage becomes indistinguishable from protecting violence itself. That emotional corrosion gives the movie more staying power than the premise alone would suggest.

The comedy begins curdling into something much meaner and sadder. The film gradually reveals itself less as a serial killer satire and more as a story about the horrifying things people convince themselves are acceptable when fear of loneliness outweighs moral clarity. Reid doesn’t present Charlie as uniquely monstrous either. That’s part of what makes the film uncomfortable. The psychology underneath her behavior feels recognizable even when the circumstances become extreme.

There’s a version of this material that could’ve easily become smug, edgy-for-the-sake-of-it provocation. SICK PUPPY avoids that by never losing sight of the emotional desperation beneath the blood and absurdity. The film’s funniest moments usually land because they’re rooted in painfully human behavior rather than random shock value. Reid’s debut leaves an impression because it’s willing to make its characters “pathetic” in ways most avoid. Underneath the murder, satire, and uncomfortable laughter lies a genuinely nasty portrait of how devotion can slowly rot into complicity without either person fully noticing it.

Please visit https://linktr.ee/overlyhonestr for more reviews.

You can follow me on Letterboxd, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. My social media accounts can also be found on most platforms by searching for 'Overly Honest Reviews'.

I’m always happy to hear from my readers; please don't hesitate to say hello or send me any questions about movies.

[photo courtesy of DARK SKY FILMS]

DISCLAIMER:
At Overly Honest Movie Reviews, we value honesty and transparency. Occasionally, we receive complimentary items for review, including DVDs, Blu-rays, CDs, Vinyl Records, Books, and more. We assure you that these arrangements do not influence our reviews, as we are committed to providing unbiased and sincere evaluations. We aim to help you make informed entertainment choices regardless of our relationship with distributors or producers.

Amazon Affiliate Links:
Additionally, this site contains Amazon affiliate links. If you purchase through these links, we may receive a commission. This affiliate arrangement does not affect our commitment to honest reviews and helps support our site. We appreciate your trust and support as you navigate these links.