Apophenia (noun) – the human tendency to find connections in unrelated ideas and objects.
Appofeniacs – the title of the debut feature from writer/director Chris Marrs Piliero, in which the real villain is confirmation bias.
In his techno-tinged satire, which received its world premiere at Fantastic Fest, chaos erupts because everyone falls prey to lies that are too easy to believe. Your partner is sleeping around? Rich people keep all their money under the bed? All white middle-class women are racist Karens? Plausible enough. And even though the only evidence for all this is AI-generated deepfakes prompted for the LOLs by amoral scumbag Duke (Aaron Holliday), the IRL damage is very, very real.
Such image manipulation has also been happening for longer than people seem to remember. Piliero recalled seeing his first deepfake in 2018 “and I was immediately enthralled by it and fearful of it. It was one of these things where I thought, ‘This is awesome and is going to be really cool, and is also going to be used nefariously.'” He was immediately drawn to the idea of making a film on the topic, “and as I watched the technology progress, finally it clicked in my head one day that I want to create this character that just fucks with people just because he can.”
Yet in the intervening years since he first became aware of deepfakes, the technology has dramatically improved – or rather, become more exponentially dangerous. After all, it’s only been a couple of years since we were all mocking Will Smith eating spaghetti, and now we’re all scrutinizing fingers for clues. “That’s the thing with AI is that it’s constantly learning from itself,” Piliero said, “so it’s always going to get better and do it faster. I was so frustrated with myself from 2018 to 2022 because I was just like, ‘Come up with a story that you like because it’s going to beat you,’ and I was so glad that it clicked in 2022 because the trajectory was moving really fucking fast, and I wanted to get it made and get it out there because [events] will surpass the story.”
However, it’s not the technology that interested him as much as how people use it in their existing interactions. “I thought it was an easy bridge to take the deepfakes into creating a story that focuses on the human element of our inclination to rely on our confirmation bias.”
That’s why the real menace isn’t a supercomputer or evil corporation, it’s a douchebag with a phone, an app, and no moral compass. Piliero said, “We all have this power, and there’s a lot of people who use this power with absolutely no regard to the human that’s on the other end.”
For star Simran Jehani, that power is less of a technology issue that can be solved with some coding than it is a tragic indictment of humanity. “All our online forums, all our reality that exists online, is mimicking what society is, and even more so how people really feel because they’re hiding behind this barrier. So it’s not surprising that the women are the victims to start with. It’s in the system.”
As always seems to be the way, the biggest targets for deepfakes, whether pre- or post-AI, are women, but the complicating factor is that Duke isn’t targeting the other characters because they’re women, but just because they’re there. Holliday noted that Duke is an equal-opportunity harasser, but the women end up taking the brunt of the harm. “My character wasn’t necessarily thinking about it. It’s just that natural progression that they’re caught in the crossfire.”
It all comes back to the endemic bias online against women, including the cast. “There may or may not be some pictures Photoshopped of me on the internet, and I’ve already had to deal with that,” said Paige Searcy, who plays one of Duke’s unwitting victims.
That’s a violation that is all too common for women performers, keying in to the age-old idea that all actresses are whores. “It’s forcing us to contend with the idea of being hypersexualized,” said Jehani. “It makes you want to stand your ground so much more. You may see these things, but they’re not real, but some people just want to believe.”
But for all the serious underpinnings of Appofeniacs, Piliero is still making what he calls a rollercoaster ride of carnage, cosplay, and debauchery, influenced by directors who dance between genres: Paul Thomas Anderson, Tarantino, the Coens, and Scorsese. “That was the most important part of making the film,” he said. “Make it entertaining, but deep into the veins of it are a lot of serious, a lot of scary elements. But as a whole, I just wanted to put you on a journey that entertains you, maybe freaks you out, maybe gives you a laugh, and makes you queasy.”
Appofeniacs
World Premiere
Thursday, Sept. 25, 2pm
Fantastic Fest 2025 runs Sept. 18-25, Passes and info at fantasticfest.com.
Find all our news, reviews, and interviews at austinchronicle.com/fantastic-fest.
