Director: John Oak Dalton
Year: 2023
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Suspense/Thriller
Plot:
After a series of strange incidents, an ASMR streamer trying to get to the bottom of the encounters finds that the smart home technology she lives with has been corrupted by a hacker that’s looking for revenge against her family and tries to stop it from affecting her life and career.
Review:
This was a highly effective and enjoyable indie thriller. Among the film's better bright spots is the strong build-up that brings the effective premise into view quite clearly. With the early setup of her living in the house alone due to the relationship she's trying to get away from, the conditions surrounding her being there, and how the living conditions are being manipulated by the house's controlling forces, the idea of what's going on in the house is gradually built-up by the events at play here. Slowly realizing that the events in question, including the capabilities of not recognizing her authoritarian commands, offering alternate care under the guise of misinterpreting instructions that were quite clearly given, and the snarky comebacks that all seem unnatural to her build everything up quite nicely.
That serves the film well to get to the main point of this which is the livestream where she's held hostage and forced to perform what her captor demands to the terrified audience. This isn't bad on its own, mixing the unknowing with her going against her usual programming to do what he instructs of her which keeps this one going while highlighting the one issue with this one since what she does isn't that impactful. The livestream that she's forced to go through is only done under vague threats without much actual harm or malicious activity against her which does lessen some of the tension of what's going on. A lot of this is also taken up with a rather uninteresting hacker search which features people looking at computer screens the whole time so it does feel rather bland and repetitive. This, though, isn't a big deal and doesn't distract from anything too much.
Overview: ***/5
A generally likable thriller more than anything else, there’s quite a lot to like here still being somewhat let down by the few issues to be had with this one which is enough to be slightly detrimental overall. Give this one a shot if you're ais type of indie genre effort or are a fan of the creative crew while those that don't appreciate either of these factors should heed caution.
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