‘Appofeniacs’ Brings Synthetic Terror to Black Sunday Film Festival

A corrupted video can travel faster than the truth, but Appofeniacs is less interested in the technology itself than in the people waiting to believe it. Chris Marrs Piliero’s horror-thriller arrives at Black Sunday Film Festival’s Midsummer Scream event tomorrow, 18 July, with a blood-soaked warning about deepfakes, paranoia and the increasingly fragile border between proof and manipulation.

Screening from 5.45pm to 7.45pm at Firstsite Cinema in Colchester, Appofeniacs follows a series of intersecting characters whose lives are thrown into violent disorder after AI-generated videos are released into the world. At the centre is Duke, an apathetic and vindictive figure who uses synthetic media to exploit suspicion, confirmation bias and the instinct to trust what appears on a screen.

The title draws from ‘apophenia’, the human tendency to detect meaningful connections in unrelated events. Piliero uses that idea as the foundation for a story in which perception becomes something that can be engineered, copied and weaponised. The result mixes horror, dark comedy and social thriller elements, though calling it a cautionary tale may be too neat. Its characters are not simply fooled by technology. They bring their own anger, prejudices and need for certainty to the material placed in front of them.

Sean Gunn, Jermaine Fowler, Aaron Holliday, Michael Abbott Jr., Simran Jehani, Amogh Kapoor, Will Brandt, Paige Searcy and Harley Bronwyn lead the cast. Gunn also serves as executive producer, with Andrew Panay, Jared Iacino and Piliero producing.

Piliero said the film began with his first encounter with deepfake technology in 2018, when he immediately saw both its novelty and its potential for abuse. By 2022, the idea had developed into a feature focused on the consequences of a tool already embedded in phones, social feeds and everyday online behaviour.

‘While many stories explore AI’s role in supercomputers and robotics, I wanted to take a different approach: a more grounded look at how deepfakes can and will wreak havoc in everyday life,’ Piliero said. ‘We’re all people. And people are easy to manipulate.’

Appofeniacs previously received FilmQuest nominations for Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Editing, Best Supporting Actor for Gunn and Best Cast. It was filmed in Los Angeles and released in the United States in September 2025.

The Black Sunday screening will be preceded by Dean Puckett’s short film Fuckface. The Midsummer Scream event begins at 10.15am and runs across four feature blocks, with full-day tickets priced at £25 and individual screenings available from £7. There is also an afterparty at a local bar once the programme ends, a detail that feels almost suspiciously cheerful given the film on offer.

Appofeniacs screens at 5.45pm on Saturday, 18 July 2026, at Firstsite Cinema in Colchester. Tickets for the screening and Black Sunday Film Festival’s full Midsummer Scream programme are available now through the event’s official booking page. For more information and tickets to the festival, visit: blacksundayff.com

Appofeniacs trailer