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Xochitl Gomez has the world’s worst babysitter job in “Hive.”
Xochitl Gomez’s final girl energy makes Hive worth catching
As a straight to Tubi streaming original, my expectations for Hive — rightly or wrongly — weren’t very high. Let’s be real, there’s enough crap on the platform to put the fertilizer industry out of business; the law of averages dictates that if you pull a random genre flick out of the Tubi gallery, it’s probably going to be bad with a capital B, A and D.
Hive, however, is a MUCH better movie than I (or perhaps anyone else reading this) anticipated. Granted, it may not be an all-time genre classic — or even a top ten horror release of the year, pending how the rest of the 2026 shakes out — but it is pretty entertaining, with a downright fantastic performance from Xochitl Gomez as our final (well, only) girl protagonist.
If I described the basic concept of Hive to you, you might think it’s a carbon copy of Weapons. But in the hands of director Felipe Vargas, it actually plays out more like a combination of Children of the Corn and A Nightmare on Elm Street. We’ve seen plenty of weird kids run amok movies over the years — everything from Village of the Damned to Cooties — and this one sort of plays out like a PG-13 version of that old Troma cult classic Beware! Children at Play. Of course, it’s a far less graphic movie and it definitely lays the fantastical elements on thick. But it’s a bit more visceral and intense than you probably anticipate. I’ve seen some people describe this film as Goosebumps-esque — unless there’s an R.L. Stine book with up-close compound fractures and people getting torn limb from limb in nightmare limbo realms, I’d argue that’s quite the misnomer.
It’s a movie that pretty much gives away its own ending in the first two minutes. And that’s not exactly a bad thing. The fun of the picture is watching Gomez slowly realize that she’s been conned into anything but an ordinary babysitting assignment — and without giving away too many trade secrets, let’s just say she figures it out in an especially icky way.
Gomez really is the best thing about the movie. Indeed, after seeing her here I wouldn’t be surprised to see some big name franchise decision-makers at least consider her for future marquee roles. She could definitely anchor a massive intellectual property like Scream or Halloween, and watching her go through the motions here basically makes Hive worth going out of your way to catch. Whenever she’s onscreen — whether she’s exploring playground slides to other dimensions or trying to get her six-year-old charge to eat something healthy — it’s totally gripping stuff.
Of course, anybody can make a high-fantasy horror movie that’s all build-up. As we all know by now, the truly hard part is making everything flow once the “truth” has been revealed. Some people might think Hive plays its hand too early and others may think it waits too late. But once the movie crosses the Rubicon (so to speak), it becomes a very different kind of movie. The first hour of the movie may feel like any number of “bubblegum horror” offerings we’ve gotten over the years (The Babysitter being the most obvious parallel, although that’s a MUCH bloodier and more risqué film), but the last 30 minutes turns into something that wouldn’t feel all that out of place in a Clive Barker adaptation. The gore quotient never gets exceedingly high, but if you’re thinking about parking a fifth-grader in front of this thing and expecting them to walk away without any nightmares … you’ve EARNED those knocks on the bedroom door at one in the morning.
The rest of the ensemble cast is pretty good. There’s actually a pretty big turning point in the film where the locus is taken off Gomez’s character and placed on Aaron Dominguez. Your mileage is going to vary on whether or not that was the best move and I’ll let you come to your own conclusions on that particular matter. There’s also a lot of third act exposition from the character played by Zenobia Kloppers. It definitely shifts the momentum and flow of the movie and you have to wonder just how much lore and world-building a flick like this needs in the first place. But it’s a fine performance from Kloppers, regardless, especially since the resolution of the movie rests almost entirely in her dialogue.
The other two cast members to mention are Victoria Firsova and Tanya van Grann. The former is the pint-sized charge (and potential demon spawn, I don’t want to say anything too definitive for those of you who haven’t seen it yet) while the latter is the tried and true neo-Yuppie Karen mother figure who may or may not know more than she’s leading on. Their roles are pretty one-dimensional (and they kind of have to be in a movie like this), but they’re certainly respectable. If anything, you might argue that their respective performances are too muted. As evident by Aunt Gladys’ Oscar win, it pays to be so over the top you’re almost bonking your noggin on moon rocks in horror movies nowadays.
Whatever you’re expecting out of Hive, it’s probably going to subvert it. It sorta’ seems like it’s going to be a tongue-in-cheek horror comedy hybrid but it actually plays the material fairly straight. Along those same lines, the fates of certain characters seem pretty obvious in the beginning, but by the time the movie’s over you actually get the opposite outcome in most cases. And when it comes time for the big reveal (i.e., the thing that ties up all of the loose ends and makes the movie as a whole make sense) it comes at you in a fairly indirect and non-traditional way. If nothing else, Hive deserves some praise for being unpredictable and rarely taking the most pedestrian route from point A to point B. Maybe not all of the efforts work as planned, but enough of them do to make the totality of Hive feel like a worthy 90-minute investment of your time.
And needless to say, it’s a LOT better than most Tubi “originals” — but considering the competition, how could it not be?
GIVE IT A WATCH IF YOU LIKE: Movies about creepy kids doing evil stuff, Don’t Tell Mom The Babysitter’s Dead, the special effects in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4
Director: Felipe Vargas
Writer: Felipe Vargas
Starring: Xochitl Gomez, Aaron Dominguez, Zenobia Kloppers, Tanya van Graan
Language: English
Run Time: 92 minutes
Release Date: April 17, 2026
