Fresh Image from A.I. Thriller ‘Appofeniacs’ Is a Scream

The A.I. thriller Appofeniacs will arrive soon from Megenta Edge Films, and we have a fresh new look thanks to Fandango.

In the film: “Amused by exploiting our instinct to believe what we see and hear, Duke (Aaron Holliday) treats deepfakes like a contagious party trick. Not because he has something to prove, but simply because he can. Soon blood starts to spill, but Duke isn’t the one who has to clean it up.

“Intersecting storylines catch the fallout of Duke’s petty pastime: Poppy (Simran Jehani), heading into the desert for a weekend of cosplay and foreplay; Clinto Binto (Sean Gunn), a legend in the scene with a reputation too expensive to fake; and Lazzy (Paige Searcy), a stranger who picks the wrong line, the wrong coffee shop, and the wrong day to argue.

“Paranoia. Confirmation bias. Baseless certainty. We’re all Appofeniacs. When anyone’s version of the truth can be created with the tap of a finger, the horror isn’t the lie. It’s what happens when people believe it.”

The image below depicts a woman screaming in horror. At what, we’ll soon find out.

Chris Marrs Piliero wrote and directed the film.

Dread Central reviewed Appofeniacs out of its Fantastic Fest premiere, noting that “while the film boasts some stunning kills and disgusting setpieces, the disjointed narrative structure ultimately takes away from Piliero’s overall message about just how easy it is to ruin someone’s life in 2025.” Read the entire review here.

“I didn’t want the film to focus on deepfakes as a technology,” Piliero previously told Variety. “I didn’t want this to be ‘AI is coming to get you’ or a supercomputer or anything of that sort. It’s more about the human element and the fallout of it. I’m using deepfakes to show how easily our lives can unravel and spiral. Obviously, I have fun with it in the film and take it to a heightened level, but I wanted to use grounded, realistic scenarios that are kind of benign and trivial.”