‘Fanatical: The Catfishing of Tegan and Sara’ Review: A True Crime Documentary About Toxic Fandom

Catfish fishing is perhaps the only place where the work of Tegan and Sara and Erin Lee Carr can come together. After all, the former is a Canadian indie pop duo and the latter is a true crime documentary filmmaker. While the eponymous twin singer/songwriter delivers beautiful and achingly catchy songs about breakups and sapphic desire, the latter filmmaker has the dark depths of shocking cases such as the theft of the Bling Ring, the despised “cannibal cop” and the murder of the infamous DeeDee Blanchard.

In Fanatical: Tegan and Sara’s catfishingthe musicians and filmmaker come together to investigate a case that is less violent, but still spooky. In an attempt to catch the hacker/catfish who has been playing with the hearts and minds of the band’s fans for 16 years, it is revealed where the highs and lows of internet fandom collide with the delicate underbelly of fame.

Fanatical: Tegan and Sara’s catfishing allows us to get a little closer

This intriguing documentary takes the audience along back to the late 2000sAs Tegan and Sara Quin emerged as artists, so did social media. Where the band—and the departing Tegan in particular—used to show up at the merch table or walk the line of fans waiting to enter the venue to sign autographs and take selfies, they could now interact on message boards, Tumblr, LastFM and Facebook. But over the course of 16 years, many fans have discovered that the Tegan they thought they were talking to was an imposter, posing as the pop star for reasons entirely their own.

Lee steps out from behind the camera here and into an on-screen conversation with Tegan (and to a lesser extent Sara) and victims who have come forward to share their stories. These women share a brilliant emotional intelligence, as they reveal their pain while simultaneously acknowledging the painful experiences of others. As Lee does for tabloid-favorite murderers and victims, she demonstrates a deep empathy for her subjects that provides a supportive space for those who admit they fell for the scam. Some of them thought they had made a cool new boyfriend—who was a pop star! Others believed they were having a secret romance with one of their own. They were all fooled by Fake Tegan, or “Fegan” as she’s called in the doc, as the investigating team tracks them down.

For the first time, Tegan herself speaks out about catfishing and how it affected her personally, and it’s the film’s most powerful revelation.

In Fanatical, Tegan Quin Shares the Pain of Toxic Fandom

Tegan is quick to point out that a large portion of her fan base is amazing and supportive of her music and each other. However, she also makes it clear that there is a terrible, dark side to public figures, perhaps especially queer ones. Fans take on a sense of ownership over a celebrity that can become judgmental and even scary.

For Tegan, the news of the catfishing was a devastating betrayal that left her questioning her friends and herself. With access to private photos, unreleased demo tracks, and even personal family news, the catfisher(s) began to worry that someone she loved had turned on her—or that her dedication to her fans had allowed this catfish to abuse the trust of her fans and friends.

Fans develop a sense of ownership over a celebrity, which can make them judgmental and even scary.

The most shocking moment in Fanatical is a tense phone conversation between Tegan, Lee, and a potential victim/suspect, who denies that their erratic online behavior toward the artist was harmful. “You were not influenced in any way,” they angrily declare to Tegan. It’s a comment that seems to reflect a common assumption about celebrities and what they have to give up for fame. Recently, queer pop princess Chappell Roan faced online backlash after go to social media Unpleasant tell fans to give her space And to leave her family out of their attempts to reach herSome suggested that she had “signed up” for this intrusive lack of privacy by being famous, as if fame were achieved by signing some sketchy contract with the devil himself.

Fame doesn’t make you impenetrable, and Tegan shows that by sharing her story — and even her hesitations about doing so in the documentary for fear it will only make matters worse. While much of her interviews are composed, there’s no denying that she carries an emotional burden with no end in sight. That Tegan has not only released music in all that time, but also a memoir with her sister and a subsequent TV adaptation called Secondary school ia testament to the couple’s resilience. They refuse to let these violations define them or disrupt their creative drive.

Fanatical confronts stan culture

To provide context for the digital waters in which this catfish swims, Lee presents a broad summary of how fan culture has evolved over the past 130 years. This sequence begins with the backlash from fans of Sherlock Holmes (the original Sir Arthur Conan Doyle version, not the intense Johnlock fandom of the 2010s). From there, an expert attempts to contextualize how fandom overreach has grown from 1893 to Eminem’s seminal song “Stan,” which chronicled an obsessive fan turned to violence, to today’s recontextualization of the term which basically means ‘superfan’.

Fanatical suggests that this transformation of “stan” risks blurring the distinction between fans who consultation they will do “anything” for their idol and fans who will actually dox so-called “haters” or stalk the object of their obsession. In a rush to connect these dots, the documentary loses the nuance of online conversation and parasocial relationshipsand his love of hyperbole is lost. A series of reconstructed tweets (with blank avatars and no timestamps) are presented as a slippery slope, where online threats of violence can lead to dangerous real-life reactions. Here, Lee cuts to clips of pop stars being grabbed on stage or pelted with objects by the audience, then to footage of trials of convicted stalkers.

Perhaps this section is meant to be a moment for any fan to reflect on how they might be casually toxic. But mixing threats of violence and doxxing with tweets like “In my household we adore Lana Del Rey and anyone who disagrees can go to hell” is bound to elicit eye-rolls. Such a tame tweet feels out of place amid the details of the attacks on Tegan and Sara, which included threats to expose the former as a “terrible person,” sharing her personal documents with others, and creating disturbing, sexually explicit fan fiction.

Fanatical: Tegan and Sara’s catfishing is a must-see

Perhaps Lee is biting off more than she can chew when she tries to apply what happened to Tegan and Sara to a broader fandom conversation. (It’s easy to imagine the film as a limited series, given the sheer size of that topic.) But despite this hesitation, Fanatical: Tegan and Sara’s catfishing is a fascinating film because of the balance of empathy between the stars and their fans. When fandom becomes toxic, both sides of the equation suffer. Lee shows this through thoughtful interviews as well as interactions between Tegan and Fegan’s real-life victims, who are brought together to pick up the pieces of this bizarre betrayal of trust.

Fandom should be a place of community, not a place where people fight and catfish each other.

These encounters range from healing to tense. Lee cleverly exposes the “unnatural” nature of such interactions by leaving camera equipment and light reflectors in the frame. It’s not to expose the artificiality of the interview, but to highlight why a particular subject—who was a Fegan suspect—might feel insecure at this moment. There’s literally a spotlight on them, and they feel it. But from this place of discomfort, hard truths and hurt feelings are finally aired so that comfort can follow.

Fandom should be a place of community, not a place of infighting and catfishing. FanaticalTegan and Sara aim to reclaim the joy of the community by sharing and shedding the shame of the whole situation. In doing so, they not only warn their fans about this nosy hacker, but also encourage the viewing public to consider how shady online behavior can impact the real world. Yes, even celebrities.

Fanatical: Tegan and Sara’s catfishing was reviewed following its world premiere at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. The documentary will later debut on Hulu.