Appofeniacs

No matter what entrepreneurs may prefer you to think, the strongest driver of new technology on the internet is, and almost always has been, pornography. With the advent of generative AI and even earlier, face mapping technologies, there has been an explosion in deepfake porn. Yet not everybody keeps up with the changes around them. Appofeniacs opens with a man watching porn on his phone and sobbing heavily. His actions when his girlfriend returns to their shared home reveal that he’s failed to think through the possibilities. But it’s the sheer triviality of what led to this catastrophe, when we eventually discover it, that shocks – if, indeed, we are to take any of this seriously at all.

It is just a film, played out on a screen for your viewing pleasure – and what, within that film, can you accept as real? Sometimes the more genuine a place is, the more peculiar it seems. Appofeniacs – the title refers to the human tendency to perceive meaning, pattern and connection where it does not exist – is built from layer upon layer of shifting reality. This could easily become annoying, but writer/director Chris Marrs Piliero is alert to the risk. Apparently appreciating the difficulty we will have in attaching ourselves to characters in this situation, he focuses on creating entertaining vignettes and fantastic visual spectacles, thus providing reasons to keep watching whilst the plot gradually reveals itself.

We move through these layers and bubbles of activity by following one character after another, just occasionally getting a glimpse of someone we have met before. The characters are larger than life, each with a distinctive look, to make it easier to keep track. The effect is rather like being at a drunken fancy dress party. Themes recur – most notably, discussions of technology and the nature of reality, in one form or another. We get glimpses of different people’s fantasies and what they mean to others, like a fast scroll through social media late at night but with more colour, with even less forbearance.

People are easy to manipulate and it has never been easier or more fun, one character proclaims, whilst another tells a stranger that her husband likes to watch.

There is a mysterious box, an unlikely treasure, an argument over coffee. Mishearing, one guy asks another if ADHD is called that because it was discovered in the Eighties. There’s air guitar and a rental property with a Himalayan pink salt lamp and a sales pitch and a hot tub and a small dog with an unmatchable air of cool. How do you know when you’ve woken up? Do you want to (either)?

It all gets gradually more violent. After all, if one doesn’t take it seriously, what’s to lose? A loving relationship can be destroyed in minutes. A life takes even less time to extinguish. Sometimes it happens simply, suddenly, accidentally; sometimes it’s spectacularly contrived. By the end, numerous streams of action, reaction et al triggered early on by tiny things have reached absurd proportions, and when they collide there is a bloodbath which very few films made to date can compete with. Ludicrously gory and delivered with panache, it’s an experience worth waiting for. It also serves as a timely reminder that no matter how we might make data dance for us, reality comes down to meat.

Reviewed on: 03 Oct 2025