Hooked

SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL 2025 REVIEW! Once the needle is in, the damage is done over and over in the harrowing documentary short Hooked, written and directed by Glen Fulthorpe. It explores the overdose death in 2008 of the director’s father, Stephen Fulthorpe. Glen Fulthorpe himself appears on camera in footage from 2009 as well as new footage from 2023, chronicling his attempt to sort out what exactly happened in his Dad’s final hours. Ever since he was an infant, Fulthorpe’s father was an out-of-control alcoholic who was sinking further into heroin. In footage shot in 2006, we meet two of his dad’s drug buddies, Ashley and Danielle, who were covered in scabs and smoking heroin off tin foil. Many years later, Fulthorpe is hunting down Ashley and Danielle to try to get more answers, as the coroner’s report was very vague. Ashley has kicked drugs. He is no longer on heroin and will answer what he can. But when Danielle is tracked down, it is obvious that she and the heroin are still very well aquatinted.

“Ever since he was an infant, Fulthorpe’s father was an out-of-control alcoholic who was sinking further into heroin.”

Hooked pushes your face into the hole in Daddy’s arm where all the money goes. When I say it is one of the most revolting and ghastly portraits of the devastation addiction causes, I mean that as a major compliment. There is not one drop of heroin chic to be found anywhere in this film, as there is nothing glamorous about narcotic slavery. What Fulthorpe gets across is the excruciating pain felt by the junkie’s family members, which is worse than the fiercest dope sickness. We get the pain of Fulthorpe as a young man who lost his father despite sticking by his degenerate a*s. We also get the pain of Fulthorpe as a grown man and a father himself, still haunted after years of being thrown away as a child for some dust in a baggie. This is where Hooked really gets under your skin and stays there like an abscess. Fulthorpe also does a masterful job of unfurling the mystery behind the day his Dad died, jumping from past to present with dexterity. The real secret weapon here is the masterful score by Carrie Penn, which will tear your f*****g heart out through your ears. Penn crafts an aural nerve system that allows Fulthorpe to transmit the magnitude of his pain to the audience. Hooked will completely tear you apart, showing how that need goes straight through a junkie’s arm and right into their kid’s self-worth.

Hooked screened at the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival.