‘Hot Spot’ Director’s Next Film “About the Brutality of Today’s World” [Interview]

Filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczynska‘s (The Lure) dystopian sci-fi thriller, Hot Spot, lands in theaters this weekend via Focus Features (read my review). With that, she’s already thinking about her next movie.

While sitting down with Dread, Smoczynska offered that she’s next working on a film “about the brutality of today’s world“.

Though she couldn’t give us a title or exact genre, I would guess that, like Hot Spot and The Lure, it won’t be so easily labeled, but more of a blend with horror leanings.

Following Hot Spot, Smoczynska’s continued focus on the brutality of our time should come as no surprise. The filmmaker’s latest is a tragic, unsettling, utterly brutal tale that plays like a bad dream. Centered around a society run by an A.I. program dubbed The Head, citizens must remain plugged into the system, or die. It depicts a chilling world that’s connected at all times, one where others can enter your mind at any moment. It’s an existence where loneliness is a luxury. Pure horror for an introvert like myself.

Written over six years ago, the film has a prophetic quality. We may not quite be where it depicts just yet, but we’re getting there. “There was no ChatGPT, there was no A.I. or what we have now,” said the director.

Continued Smoczynska, “For us, what was important was how would this influence people, their freedom, their way of communication? And this is our reality now.“

As you’d expect with the director behind The Lure, though, Smoczynska isn’t interested in telling plain and simple stories about our present. With Hot Spot, she thinks of the film as “a fairy tale for adults“.

Though not a violent movie, when there is violence, it goes hard, and that’s all part of the fairy tale vibe for the filmmaker. “Hot Spot is brutal. Like the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. They were very brutal. And I like it because I think life is very brutal.“