Fantastic Fest 2025 Review: “Appofeniacs” – Timely and Outrageous!

​Monsters, vampires, werewolves, zombies, and ghosts are sure fire ways to scare audiences in horror. They can be terrifying to look at and act in ways that defy human abilities. Even though they can transform, disappear, or move stealthily, where humans have always matched up to them is in their ability to exhibit violence against one another in the most destructive ways. The worst of humanity already has the heartlessness to harm others by themselves. But, what happens when they are given tools that make it easier to carry out their sadistic missions?

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Enter in deepfakes, the most vile and dangerous form of AI technology to exist in our lifetime. Deepfakes allow individuals to create photos and videos using anybody’s face to make them appear real. They allow individuals to create content of other people saying and doing things that the target has never said or done. In this, truth is annihilated and target is obliterated. Appofeniacs, the first feature by Chris Marrs Pillero, displays a future in which deepfakes are as easy as ever to create and even easier to ruin someone’s life, sending them into unimaginable paranoia.

Pillero, having directed a number of music videos before from famous artists like Britney Spears, Ariana Grande, and Avril Lavigne, has a sharp eye for chaos and quick editing that allows his fast paced directing to deliver. His quick storytelling methods keep audiences waiting for the characters’ and his next move as a filmmaker, never quite knowing where everything will land. His directing matches the script perfectly in how both move with its characters keeping everyone on screen and audiences offscreen waiting to see the deadly conclusions of everyone’s choices.

At the center of the film’s events is Duke (Aaron Holliday) who discusses how one of the most powerful forms of technology is in the palm of everyone’s hands, to be used as they wish. This allows him to create deepfake videos of people in his life and in passing to wreak havoc on everyone around him.

The structural avenue Piliero moves through allows audiences to see connections between the characters story wise in a way that also displays how technology connects us just as unknowingly. The film is not trying to piece together a puzzle necessarily as to where each event fits chronologically but instead hones in on how the world of deepfakes and AI tools both have and will take hold of us all if we continue to get sucked into the unending world of ‘inevitability’ of it.

The film focuses on how the internet, a never-ending world of information and content, connects us so closely that this big world seems to get smaller by the minute as we watch Piliero’s characters go about their days.

The most engaging idea that Appofeniacs addresses is what evokes evil in the film, people or the technology. It begs the question, ‘Is it people we should fear the most or the technology they are given?’

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Duke feels like a sociopath in his ability to create deepfakes of people he doesn’t like and people he barely knows. Where new deepfake technology gives him an easy outlet to express his anger, the film certainly paints the convenience of AI to be a major antagonist in the film. However, given that AI has been created by humans for humans, and we have the power to cease its existence, the film also paints a different picture of the destruction humans can create on their own.

Appofeniacs is one of the most enthralling films to come out of Fantastic Fest so far, major credit to Piliero with his first feature.

‘Appofeniacs’ Rating – 4/5