Mike Mayhall’s The Madness of David Judge, now streaming on Tubi, Amazon Prime Video, and Movie Central, is a five-part descent into the fractured mind of a man whose reality is crumbling beneath him. What begins as the familiar story of a successful author betrayed by his wife’s affair and her sudden disappearance soon unravels into something far darker, where whispers, shadows, and visions blur the line between grief and the supernatural.
The series thrives on atmosphere. Mayhall and his team create a world that is at once intimate and suffocating, where every hallway, every flicker of light, every silence carries menace. It is not the jump scare that unsettles here but the creeping, gnawing dread that perhaps nothing is what it seems—not even the safety of one’s own mind. Jeremy Sande as David anchors the series with a performance that captures both bravado and vulnerability. His slide from control into paranoia is chillingly convincing, and when the hallucinations take hold, you are never certain if you are watching a haunted man or a man inventing his own ghosts.
There are echoes of The Haunting of Hill House and classic psychological thrillers, yet The Madness of David Judge has its own voice. It resists easy explanations, keeping the audience guessing whether David’s torment is purely psychological or if something darker has attached itself to him. This ambiguity is both the series’ greatest strength and its occasional weakness. For some viewers, the refusal to clarify will be deliciously unsettling; for others, it may feel evasive, as though the ground never quite settles beneath the narrative.
What is undeniable is Mayhall’s command of pacing. With only five episodes, the story never overstays its welcome, each chapter pulling David—and the viewer—further into the abyss. The titles themselves, such as Suddenly There Came a Tapping and When the Devil Whispers, suggest a gothic poetry that carries through in the execution. The supporting cast, including Sarah S. Fisher as David’s wife Samantha, provides enough texture to keep the stakes personal, though some characters feel more like shadows orbiting his unraveling psyche than fully realized people.
If the series falters, it is in its reliance on familiar tropes: the unfaithful spouse, the mysterious disappearance, the unreliable narrator. Yet even within these conventions, Mayhall finds moments of freshness, using them less as clichés than as building blocks for a slow-burn nightmare. The final episodes offer a resolution that may not satisfy every craving for emotional depth but succeed in tying the thematic threads together with enough intensity to leave an imprint.
The Madness of David Judge is not designed for casual background viewing. It demands attention, it wants you to lean in, to question, to feel the same destabilization its protagonist endures. It may not reinvent the genre, but it honors it, and for viewers who crave a tense, atmospheric story that lingers long after the credits roll, it is an experience worth surrendering to.
Now Streaming: The Madness of David Judge is available on Tubi (free), Amazon Prime Video, and Movie Central.
Trailer for “The Madness of David Judge” on Youtube:
Stream on Tubi:
https://tubitv.com/series/300016235/the-madness-of-david-judge