The great science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” For Mark Netter, director of new techno-terror Nightmare Code, we’re in an age of technological sorcery. “We knew how the pulley works. But you have no idea how your phone works.”
Netter’s debut feature as a director receives its Texas premiere on Sept. 17 as part of science-fiction festival Other Worlds Austin‘s year-round programming. However, it’s already picked up the Philip K. Dick award at the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction and Supernatural Film Festival earlier this year, for its depiction of the birth of a techno-dystopia.
Netter put it bluntly: “Technology will win out.” On the positive side, there’s the way social media usurped the traditional control of information during the Arab Spring, allowing the world to see what was happening on the streets. “You saw things sneaking out that you never would have seen before.” On the darker side, there’s the increasing fear (and proven evidence) that technology can be used to control, monitor, and subvert. “You have no idea if the NSA is watching you through your phone, which we know they can do and will do.”
That sense of surveillance is constant. The movie is told by splitting the screen into four different images, like monitors at a security station. “The movie teaches you how to watch it,” said Netter, although it was a tough learning curve for his cast. “Actors would ask me, ‘When am I getting my close up?’ And I’d tell them, ‘Well, there’ll be a scene where you’re in front of a PC camera.'”
The feeds come from the laptop and security cameras at a firm that is working on a new facial recognition software called ROPER, one that can detect mood. Programmer Brett Desmond (Andrew West, best known as cannibal king Gareth from The Walking Dead) is brought in to help bring the product to market, but this isn’t the normal deadline-driven hire. He’s desperate for cash after his whistle-blowing at another company went sour, and the ROPER team is desperate for staff after their chief coder killed half the team. And with only video feeds to tell the story, can anyone in the office really trust what their monitors are telling them? Netter said, “You can’t trust a photo that you’ve seen and not know it’s been Photoshopped.”
Netter understands the claustrophobia of the tech environment, and what it can do to people. He said, “I’d worked in the video-game business and I knew how programmers talk to each other, and I worked in a start-up and saw how the discussions went when time is running out and the money is running out.”
For Netter, the title Nightmare Code comes with three aspects. He said, “One of them is computer code that is difficult to work with. One of them is a reference to the classic film noir Nightmare Alley. That’s a dark picture, maybe the darkest of the noirs. And then the other reason is that computer code is changing human behavior. People think that rules don’t apply anymore.”
As Desmond spends more time sealed in the room with his new colleagues, trying to fix ROPER, his behavior is affected by more than just office politics. The software itself isn’t just reading emotional states, but begins to affect them: effectively re-coding the users’ own firmware. Netter said, “Movies are about the codes of behavior between people: the mafia code in The Godfather, or the hero code in John Wayne movies.” As humans become more dependent on technology, it seems inevitable that the technology will influence their actions. Netter argues it’s already clearly happening, as the Ashley Madison hack proved. He said, “There’s an anonymity that stops your wife finding out or your husband finding out, and that changes people’s behaviors.”
Technology also affects intimacy. Recently, Netter had a relative staying in Japan, and they stayed in contact through Skype. However, he said, “It’s not the same experience as being in the room with him, or visiting him, or going to dinner with him.” In the film, that distance is expressed through Desmond’s increasing alienation from his wife. Netter put it simply: “You can’t kiss your daughter through a video screen.”
Other Worlds Austin presents the Texas premiere of Nightmare Code, 9:30pm, Sept. 17, at the Alamo Drafthouse Village, 2700 W. Anderson. Writer/director Mark Netter will be in attendance. Tickets via www.otherworldsaustin.com.
Nightmare Code is available on Google Play now, and will be released on DVD on Oct. 27. More info at www.nightmare-code.com.
This article appears in September 11 • 2015.
