The Fanatic (2019)

The Fanatic is the kind of lean, grimy Hollywood fever-dream that doesn’t pretend to be tasteful—it just grabs you by the collar and drags you through a pulpy nightmare about obsession, celebrity, and the lines fans think they’re allowed to cross. Fred Durst directs with a surprisingly brisk, street-level momentum, keeping the movie moving like a tabloid headline you can’t stop reading, even when you know it’s going somewhere ugly. And whatever you’ve heard, John Travolta goes all in: it’s a committed, high-wire performance that turns Moose into a jittery fuse of vulnerability and menace, making the tension feel uncomfortably personal. It’s not for everyone—especially if you’re allergic to trashy thrills or hard-R violence—but if you like efficient, nasty little thrillers that know exactly what they are, this one is a memorable late-night watch.

The Fanatic is clearly trying to be a grimy Hollywood nightmare about parasocial obsession and celebrity entitlement, with John Travolta swinging for an outsized, tragic figure at the center. The problem is the film’s tone often feels less like a tense thriller and more like an awkward, mean-spirited spectacle, where the violence and humiliation play louder than any real insight or empathy. If you’re sensitive to portrayals that can read as exploitative or you want a smart, psychologically grounded cat-and-mouse story, this may feel embarrassing rather than disturbing in the way it intends. That said, if you’re in the mood for a bizarre, meme-adjacent curiosity with occasional uncomfortable intensity and a committed lead performance, you might get a perverse kind of value out of it—just don’t expect finesse.