(Credits: Netflix)

Spoiler alert: What if the person tormenting you through your phone wasn’t a stranger hiding behind a fake profile? Have you ever thought it could be someone sitting at the same dinner table as you? Those questions the new Netflix documentary raises.

Well, that is exactly what happens in the latest true-crime documentary, Unknown Number: The High School Catfish. And it is the reason this story feels more chilling and more relevant than any catfish tale you have heard before.

We have all grown up with warnings about “stranger danger” on the internet. MTV’s Catfish turned it into entertainment, while countless podcasts and documentaries have dissected how people fall for someone who doesn’t exist or believe too easily in tales spun by anonymous online entities. But this documentary rips apart that old narrative: the danger isn’t far away, on the other side of the black mirror; the call is from inside the house.

The story begins in small-town Michigan, with the perfect high school sweethearts, the inseparable Lauryn and Owen, sharing the kind of teenage romance you root for with heart eyes. Then the texts started. Messages telling Lauryn she was ugly and worthless, and that Owen was cheating on her, and ones telling Owen to help “take down” Lauryn. The cruelty escalated until it wasn’t just bullying. She was being stalked, with the unknown sender describing outfits they’d worn that day and games they’d just played.

What makes Unknown Number so gripping is how it plays out like a mystery thriller. Suspects are introduced one by one: an old crush, a cousin, and a jealous classmate. Police chase leads, the FBI even gets involved, and for years, nobody can figure it out. And then the reveal hits. The number belongs not to a friend or an enemy at school, but to Lauryn’s mother, Kendra.

That twist is horrifying enough, but the documentary doesn’t stop at shock value. It asks us to sit with the bigger questions: why would a parent inflict this kind of psychological torture on her child? Kendra’s excuses are messy and indigestible. She said financial stress, trauma from her own past, and a warped sense of protection made her do all that. Experts suggest something closer to cyber Munchausen’s by proxy, where harm is created to force closeness and control.

This is where the documentary feels frighteningly relevant. We live in a world where every teen’s life is online. Our phones have become our lifejackets in this digital ocean, and parents constantly worry about who might be on the other end of a text or call. But Unknown Number flips the fear inward. It shows us how control, obsession, and mental illness can twist the idea of “protection” into something destructive.

The hardest part to watch is not even the reveal but the aftermath. Lauryn still says she loves her mother while struggling to reconcile the mom who raised her with the person who sent those vile messages. That contradiction is what lingers long after the credits. It is love and betrayal sharing space in a body, uncomfortably staring each other in the eyes.

Netflix has delivered plenty of shocking true-crime stories, but this one cuts deeper because it forces us to rethink safety itself. If catfishing isn’t just the work of strangers, what does that mean for the way we talk to our kids about passively trusting some relationships over others and online danger? Unknown Number doesn’t give easy answers, but it does leave one truth behind: sometimes the scariest monsters aren’t online at all.