Deepfakes Get Deadly in Outrageously Fun Appofeniacs (FANTASTIC)
Title: Appofeniacs
First Non-Festival Release: TBD
Director: Chris Marrs Piliero
Writer: Chris Marrs Piliero
Runtime: 90 Minutes
Starring: Aaron Holiday, Jermaine Folwer, Sean Gunn
Where to Watch: Check out where to find it here
This film’s review was written after its screening at the Fantastic Film Festival in 2025.
Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has made waves in the technology sector for its perceived utility in making life easier for humans. But does it? Its use leads to revenge porn, layoffs, misinformation, psychosis, and is generally not reliable in producing consistent correct answers. What is its place in society and is it something that demands investment? Appofeniacs says hell no.
Duke (Aaron Holiday) is obsessed with making deepfakes of people using an advanced AI technology. In his efforts to dish out payback to those he believes wrong him, Duke places these people, strangers and acquaintances alike, in videos designed to ruin their lives. The results are exactly what he desires. Like a quick shot of chaos injected directly into their lives, the videos do their best to twist narratives and mess up as much as possible. Little does Duke know that this type of trolling comes back around to those silly enough to play with it.
A timely and explosive takedown of the evils of AI, Appofeniacs uses extreme violence as a metaphor for the ways that this particular technology can be used to destroy people.
The pieces of Appofeniacs come together through seemingly unconnected vignettes before the story slowly closes in on itself. Using a non-linear story to better explain how interconnected AI abuse works, Appofeniacs sees its inevitable conclusion. While it is gimmicky, and even a bit convoluted, at times, the decision to split up the story ensures each confrontation builds on the tension, mystery, and terror before it, much like the stolen material AI trains itself on. It never feels too on the nose either. The characters have enough agency to fight against their circumstances and the connections between scenes never feel too tenuous. Its insistence on wrapping the narrative around itself can get dizzying at times making it harder for the horror to seep through.
With a small minority obsessed with the technology, and totally unencumbered by its ethical concerns, the ultra-violence of Appofeniacs is necessary to demonstrate the power it has over people’s lives. Like a pressure valve releasing, the flashy moments of bloodshed erupt with fury much like the swift public response to the various victims of the deepfakes. At the core of everything, however, are the sad people that prop up this technology, blissfully unaware to the damage they inflict on others, or worse, those that know but don’t care about their impact. The garishness may be off-putting at times but it is the right stylistic choice when lampooning the technology and those who blindly support it.
The only thing stopping Appofeniacs from achieving true greatness comes down to some of the decisions made in its eyebrow-raising second act. When depicting a white women dealing with the fall out of a racist deepfake, Appofeniacs takes a bizarre approach to the topic. Rather than leaning into the seriousness of the horror, as it does with the other vignettes, Appofeniacs leans more into the comedy of this woman reacting to the backlash. It becomes this uncomfortable and unfocused departure from its point that it distracts from the overall quality of the story. Furthermore, the clash in tone leaves a sour taste when comparing to how it treats issues of race when compared to the other transgressions. It’s a noticeable lapse in judgment that derails Appofeniacs from making its point unscathed.
When it comes to the horror elements, director Chris Marrs Piliero understands how to build tension and allow it to naturally explode. Dripping with tension, moments of hyper-stylized violence light up the screen like candy-colored homing beacons. A funhouse of horrors, Appofeniacs might take its subject matter seriously, but it certainly doesn’t take its horror seriously, which works to its benefit. Taking cues from the bombastic brand of action horror that has taken hold as of late, Appofeniacs is a lot more like a firework blowing up in your face than a more traditional scare. Each moment is big and bold, prioritizing absurdity over function, which allows Appofeniacs to carve its own niche within the sub-genre.
Despite this, Appofeniacs is a crowd-pleasing horror film that incorporates elements of home invasion horror, tech horror, and slashers to make an engaging and decisive takedown of the horrendous technology thrust upon us in the most cynical way. Some might not appreciate the overt homages or the way it attempts to tackle serious topics like racism, but these elements don’t detract too much from the overall message. Timely, gory, and positively outrageous, Appofeniacs is the perfect anti-AI slasher you’ve been waiting for.
Overall Score? 8/10
