I saw this one with my friend Jen and she called it quirky. I’d say, interesting story about an online food influencer who has an eating disorder. Of course it’s much more than just an eating disorder, there’s a food influencer rivalry within the same organization, there’s a class-conscious conflict with this person who was hired as a lowly dishwasher becoming the on-camera star, there’s body-issues because she’s not the thin camera-friendly pixie and then there’s the lecherous boss who expects “favors” from his female stars. What’s Maddy’s secret again? Well, it was kind’a hard to ignore that Maddy, short for Madison, was played by writer/director, John Early… so, while watching the film, Jen and I were left wondering the movie if “Maddy’s Secret” was that she was a trans-woman… 

A low-budget independent film, everyone involved in the production had at least two or three jobs and were all friends of the write/director/star, John Early. That’s not to say that the sets, the sound and cinematography weren’t well done, especially the lighting… the interior of Maddy’s house was so artfully lit that it bordered on being a tad distracting (especially some fog elements just outside the door, of a story set in Echo Park/LA). I guess where the film fell a bit short was in the writing and as a result, some of the acting. Jen said it best, in that there was no nuance to be found anywhere in this movie, in that some of the comedic/melodrama scenes felt either completely over the top and/or paper-thin tropes. At the same time, the care taken to make sure that all of the food elements of the story rang true and did not resort to hand-wavy nonsense was impressive. At least the whole experience led to great conversations afterwards about why they chose to do X and not Y. 

For my boomer-buddies, this was an LGBT+ normative story where an effort was made to represent all body-types and the fact that a gay man chose to play a woman with an eating disorder and play it with no winking at the camera… that might be a bit of a challenge for some audiences. If you’re at all curious about what the “younger” generation of film makers1 are producing, here’s a pretty good example of some talented people giving it a go. Enjoy.

[Movie viewed on 2026-07-13 at Cinema 21 with Jen]

Sources:

Tags: 2026 movies, independent films, LGBTQ+ normative, movie review, video Fridays

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FOOTNOTES:
  1. “Younger,” meaning under 60, these days. For a truly young take, you need to watch “Backrooms” to get the 20-something end of the spectrum. And while we’re on the subject, I think where Backrooms hits it and Maddy’s Secret misses is that Backrooms had two stellar name actors in the lead and limited their story and didn’t try to do too much and I think the Maddy’s Secret kind’a was all about doing too much…[↩]