Musk Is the Scariest Horror Movie of the Year: Review

Even at half the length, Musk would not be an easy watch. I know this because when we reached the intermission for this four-hour documentary, I was already exhausted. Diving deeply into the full scope of Elon Musk’s life and career, director Alex Gibney interviews a bevy of past Musk collaborators, journalists who have reported on him, and two of his ex-partners for context on how, exactly, a South African-born tech geek became a way-too-powerful political figure perhaps responsible for the deaths of millions.

The material covered by this documentary is pretty exhaustive: As someone who has reluctantly been following news about this man for some time, the only notable omissions I caught were:

• Anything related to cryptocurrency, including Dogecoin
• Musk admitting that he cheats at video games
• Killing all those monkeys with Neuralink chips (Neuralink itself is mentioned)

Otherwise, it’s a pretty comprehensive portrait. It explores the impact of Musk’s personal and financial investment in businesses including Tesla, SpaceX, and the company formerly known as Twitter. His complex family and romantic relationships also get the spotlight, and if you’re sick of Trump, be warned that Musk’s descent into politics is also a major aspect of the film.

The first half actually gives Musk a lot of credit for his ability to straddle the line between engineer and businessman, a skill set which helped him earn millions during the late 1990s dot-com era and navigate the rough early days of SpaceX. Although at one point there’s a reference to some of his coding work being incompetent, it would probably be Musk’s favorite part of the documentary… Except for his hairline circa 1998. (Also, not to be shallow, but Musk’s facial hair choices over the past several decades have been rough. At least he’s given up on the chin beard.)

After celebrating his initial wins with SpaceX — which did successfully create reusable rockets, a huge win for the space program — Musk the movie then makes a point of shutting down those often-stated dreams of “occupying Mars,” something experts say is a long, long, long way off. It’s not the only Musk-owned business under the microscope, either; there’s a particularly memorable look at Tesla’s promise of “self-driving” cars, a promise that has failed to come true, and has also led to some pretty brutal fatalities.

On the domestic front, ex-wife Justine Musk is interviewed extensively about their marriage as well as their eldest daughter’s transition; Grimes is not interviewed, but the AI-inspired music which initially connected her with Musk, and their later custody battle over son X Æ A-Xii, are explored. Also getting a lot of screen time is former right wing influencer Ashley St. Clair, who went public with her own custody battle with Musk in 2025 and clearly has some regrets about her choices.

Gibney marks COVID as the transition point for Musk’s hard right turn into politics, with plenty of footage from Trump campaign stops and Joe Rogen podcast appearances to remind us of the special hell he’s helped to create. Even Musk’s alleged abuse of illegal drugs including ketamine comes up — albeit very carefully, in relation to The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the issue (which Musk, it’s revealed, tried to stop with a call to Rupert Murdoch).

The major missteps are aesthetic ones totally unrelated to the actual content. To play into Musk’s alleged belief that we’re all living in a simulation, Gibney brings in digital graphics that treat the movie’s subject as a video game avatar. Those moments are fine. What’s less palatable are the animated sequences which “dramatize” events including Musk’s mass layoffs at Twitter and the DOGE destruction of life-saving federal agencies.

Those events are depicted in the style of a first-person mass shooter simulator, where a player using an Iron Man-style rocket glove blasts his way through offices, turning innocent people into digital dust. It’s tasteless even before one considers the real-life impact of those events; Musk does take a more somber tone when it reveals the devastating consequences of killing USAID, but the prelude leading up to that is still skin-crawling.

Additionally, in absence of an interview with the real Elon, Gibney and his team have created a digital Elon clone, who sits in a gamer chair and stares straight into the camera while he says real-life quotes drawn from Musk’s many public statements, interviews, and podcast appearances. According to the press notes, AI tools were only used to “to get the hand-designed avatar to speak in sync with the actual Musk audio.” But that doesn’t make the final product any less unsettling to look at, even when he’s quoting more banal comments from Musk’s past public appearances, not the more racist/fascist stuff. The Uncanny Valley is impossible to escape, in situations like this.

The movie ends with some chilling notes regarding the “Department of War” incorporating Grok into its operations, as well as Musk’s foreknowledge of the 2024 election outcome, perhaps due to his ownership of internet company Starlink. Gibney implies that there’s real potential for him to manipulate the 2026 midterm elections in some unclear way, making the timing for its release pretty ideal.

Really, there is no question that Musk serves as a vital, nearly comprehensive document not just of Musk as a person, but of the increasingly dystopian world he is currently helping to shape. It didn’t need the gimmicks. The truth is captivating — and horrifying — on its own.

Musk will receive a limited theatrical release in Los Angeles and New York on October 9th. It will then go nationwide on October 16th.