The horror genre has always been political and subversive. What better way to couch your fears about things you can’t control, like the direction of this country, than in fears you can control, like fictitious movies. Appofeniacs aims to tap into our anxieties about new technology, deepfakes, and AI with its new blood-soaked trailer.
The upcoming film is written by Chris Marrs Piliero, who is also making his directorial feature film debut.
Appofeniacs tells the story of Duke (Aaron Holliday), who decides to use AI like a toy, either unaware or not caring about the repercussions. He goes on a spree of making deepfake videos, showing how with a few clicks of a mouse you can destroy someone’s life…or end it.
Holliday stars alongside Jermaine Fowler (The Blackening), Will Brandt (Ashes), Paige Searcy (On Call), Simran Jehani (Pocket Shock), Harley Bronwyn (The Moonlight Murders), Michael Abbott Jr. (The Dark and the Wicked), and Sean Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy).
Appofeniacs
In the brief trailer, we see Duke telling his friend all about how, with a few button clicks, you can make something “indistinguishable from life.” What follows is a montage of all hell breaking loose, up to and including Sean Gunn’s hands duct-taped together with a lit explosive in between.
Stories about the horrors of AI are probably going to be dominating the upcoming wave of horror films. People who aren’t afraid of the ethical and moral impacts of AI are scared of the environmental devastation it causes. With more and more companies trying to shove AI down our throats as an inevitability, it makes sense that storytellers are reacting to it. Sometimes in not-so-far-fetched ways.
The trailer is right; plenty of deepfake videos have severely harmed or tried to harm people’s reputations. In 2023, Oscar-winning Tom Hanks had to warn fans about a deepfake video floating around trying to sell dental plans. Now the 2023 video looked like a step up from the graphics we saw in Polar Express, and people were still falling for it. (Imagine how many more victims there could have been if Hanks didn’t find out or speak up.)
Now that the technology is getting more and more realistic every day, scams impersonating even non-celebrities are becoming an all-too-common occurrence. And unfortunately, scams are often the best-case scenario in these situations.
This trailer shows glimpses of what appears to be a public freakout video, and we can only guess what else Duke cooks up to ruin some lives.
Appofeniacs hits theaters on October 2. You can check out the trailer below:
