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There is no better way to start a long and tedious science fiction fandom fight than by asking for a definition of the genre. But to keep things simple, let’s go with the Oxford Dictionary’s wording: “Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or […]

The post Why Has Sci-Fi TV Stopped Imagining Our Future? appeared first on Den of Geek.

The casting process for any movie is a difficult thing, one that involves nuanced factors such as figuring out schedules, availability, chemistry, or even just aligned visions. And then there are times where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a moment when he met Eiza González.

“It was the first thing she said to me,” Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest conversation while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “She said, ‘You know, the script reminds me of Silent Hill.’” The smile practically bursts from the director’s face when the memory comes back. “I was like she’s perfect!”

When you see the finished film, the influences are apt. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery—and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González’s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a movie told entirely from Riya’s subjective point-of-view literalizes it in a fight scene with scalpels, fire, and perhaps a martial arts legend.

“It reminded me of Silent Hill 2,” González specifies about the whole film. “I used to play Silent Hill avidly and [Ash] really reminded me of that vibe. [And this] energy was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person perspective in movies. It just gives you a sense of being in it, and also creates so much anxiety. I thought that was dope.”

The connection between Ash and iconic video game imagery isn’t entirely an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming tools when designing visuals for the film: “I spent a lot of time learning Unreal Engine and trying to learn visual effects because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I just wasn’t satisfied with my drawings,” he explains.

Yes, that’s a unique approach for film development, but Ash is an unique take on the proverbial haunted spaceship movie. “The script [written by Jonni Remmler] came like a jigsaw puzzle,” Flying Lotus observes. “It didn’t have to be constructed that way, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, ‘What is this?’”

When Ash begins, González’s character Riya awakens on a desolated shuttle with no clear memory of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for certain is the planet outside is bleakly oppressive, overcast in menacing psychedelic reds and purples. Yet that seems pitcuresque when compared to how seemingly all of Riya’s crew onboard the ship has been wiped out by… something.

“The movie is from Riya’s perspective, and the colors and the visual tone is a reflection of her headspace,” the helmer says about his movie’s evocative look. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she’s dealing with emotionally.”

“It’s purposeful,” González agrees. “The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they’re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance.” It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia doesn’t even know herself.

“She’s sort of like a newborn baby,” González says. “It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron.”

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

“This [script] came to Eiza and I’s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other’s back from the beginning,” Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya doesn’t know anything that is going on, Paul’s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

“When he shows up, he’s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he hasn’t been with the group for some time,” Paul says. “He’s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from [Riya] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he’s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her.”

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film’s composer.

“It’s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together,” Flying Lotus says of the film’s hypnotic soundscape. “The original thing I wanted to do just wasn’t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started [to become] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter‘s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, ‘What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself?’”

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies—as well as independent cinema.

“Independent filmmaking is challenging,” González points out. And with Ash, she says “here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that’s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That’s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking.”

For Flying Lotus, he’s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. “Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in.”

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus’ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

The casting process for any movie is a difficult thing, one that involves nuanced factors such as figuring out schedules, availability, chemistry, or even just aligned visions. And then there are times where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of […]

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus’ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

The casting process for any movie is a difficult thing, one that involves nuanced factors such as figuring out schedules, availability, chemistry, or even just aligned visions. And then there are times where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a moment when he met Eiza González.

“It was the first thing she said to me,” Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest conversation while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “She said, ‘You know, the script reminds me of Silent Hill.’” The smile practically bursts from the director’s face when the memory comes back. “I was like she’s perfect!”

When you see the finished film, the influences are apt. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery—and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González’s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a movie told entirely from Riya’s subjective point-of-view literalizes it in a fight scene with scalpels, fire, and perhaps a martial arts legend.

“It reminded me of Silent Hill 2,” González specifies about the whole film. “I used to play Silent Hill avidly and [Ash] really reminded me of that vibe. [And this] energy was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person perspective in movies. It just gives you a sense of being in it, and also creates so much anxiety. I thought that was dope.”

The connection between Ash and iconic video game imagery isn’t entirely an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming tools when designing visuals for the film: “I spent a lot of time learning Unreal Engine and trying to learn visual effects because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I just wasn’t satisfied with my drawings,” he explains.

Yes, that’s a unique approach for film development, but Ash is an unique take on the proverbial haunted spaceship movie. “The script [written by Jonni Remmler] came like a jigsaw puzzle,” Flying Lotus observes. “It didn’t have to be constructed that way, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, ‘What is this?’”

When Ash begins, González’s character Riya awakens on a desolated shuttle with no clear memory of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for certain is the planet outside is bleakly oppressive, overcast in menacing psychedelic reds and purples. Yet that seems pitcuresque when compared to how seemingly all of Riya’s crew onboard the ship has been wiped out by… something.

“The movie is from Riya’s perspective, and the colors and the visual tone is a reflection of her headspace,” the helmer says about his movie’s evocative look. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she’s dealing with emotionally.”

“It’s purposeful,” González agrees. “The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they’re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance.” It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia doesn’t even know herself.

“She’s sort of like a newborn baby,” González says. “It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron.”

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

“This [script] came to Eiza and I’s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other’s back from the beginning,” Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya doesn’t know anything that is going on, Paul’s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

“When he shows up, he’s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he hasn’t been with the group for some time,” Paul says. “He’s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from [Riya] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he’s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her.”

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film’s composer.

“It’s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together,” Flying Lotus says of the film’s hypnotic soundscape. “The original thing I wanted to do just wasn’t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started [to become] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter‘s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, ‘What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself?’”

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies—as well as independent cinema.

“Independent filmmaking is challenging,” González points out. And with Ash, she says “here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that’s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That’s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking.”

For Flying Lotus, he’s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. “Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in.”

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus’ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

Michael. Freddy. Chucky. Jason. These icons of horror defined the genre and set the standard for a good horror movie. They taught the world that monsters needed a signature look, a strange backstory, and a set of rules for defeating them. Moreover, they established that monsters needed a gimmick, some specific manner for taking out […]

The post The Final Destination Franchise Saved American Horror in the 2000s appeared first on Den of Geek.

The casting process for any movie is a difficult thing, one that involves nuanced factors such as figuring out schedules, availability, chemistry, or even just aligned visions. And then there are times where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a moment when he met Eiza González.

“It was the first thing she said to me,” Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest conversation while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “She said, ‘You know, the script reminds me of Silent Hill.’” The smile practically bursts from the director’s face when the memory comes back. “I was like she’s perfect!”

When you see the finished film, the influences are apt. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery—and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González’s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a movie told entirely from Riya’s subjective point-of-view literalizes it in a fight scene with scalpels, fire, and perhaps a martial arts legend.

“It reminded me of Silent Hill 2,” González specifies about the whole film. “I used to play Silent Hill avidly and [Ash] really reminded me of that vibe. [And this] energy was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person perspective in movies. It just gives you a sense of being in it, and also creates so much anxiety. I thought that was dope.”

The connection between Ash and iconic video game imagery isn’t entirely an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming tools when designing visuals for the film: “I spent a lot of time learning Unreal Engine and trying to learn visual effects because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I just wasn’t satisfied with my drawings,” he explains.

Yes, that’s a unique approach for film development, but Ash is an unique take on the proverbial haunted spaceship movie. “The script [written by Jonni Remmler] came like a jigsaw puzzle,” Flying Lotus observes. “It didn’t have to be constructed that way, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, ‘What is this?’”

When Ash begins, González’s character Riya awakens on a desolated shuttle with no clear memory of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for certain is the planet outside is bleakly oppressive, overcast in menacing psychedelic reds and purples. Yet that seems pitcuresque when compared to how seemingly all of Riya’s crew onboard the ship has been wiped out by… something.

“The movie is from Riya’s perspective, and the colors and the visual tone is a reflection of her headspace,” the helmer says about his movie’s evocative look. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she’s dealing with emotionally.”

“It’s purposeful,” González agrees. “The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they’re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance.” It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia doesn’t even know herself.

“She’s sort of like a newborn baby,” González says. “It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron.”

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

“This [script] came to Eiza and I’s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other’s back from the beginning,” Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya doesn’t know anything that is going on, Paul’s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

“When he shows up, he’s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he hasn’t been with the group for some time,” Paul says. “He’s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from [Riya] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he’s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her.”

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film’s composer.

“It’s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together,” Flying Lotus says of the film’s hypnotic soundscape. “The original thing I wanted to do just wasn’t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started [to become] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter‘s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, ‘What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself?’”

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies—as well as independent cinema.

“Independent filmmaking is challenging,” González points out. And with Ash, she says “here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that’s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That’s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking.”

For Flying Lotus, he’s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. “Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in.”

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus’ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

Looney Tunes is an American institution. Everybody and their mother—and likely their mother’s mother—knows who Bugs Bunny, Marvin the Martian, and Taz are. The franchise has been going strong for nearly a century, but recent events have resulted in their cache getting stuck in limbo. The heavily maligned cancellation of the Coyote vs. Acme flick […]

The post The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie Review appeared first on Den of Geek.

The casting process for any movie is a difficult thing, one that involves nuanced factors such as figuring out schedules, availability, chemistry, or even just aligned visions. And then there are times where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a moment when he met Eiza González.

“It was the first thing she said to me,” Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest conversation while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “She said, ‘You know, the script reminds me of Silent Hill.’” The smile practically bursts from the director’s face when the memory comes back. “I was like she’s perfect!”

When you see the finished film, the influences are apt. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery—and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González’s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a movie told entirely from Riya’s subjective point-of-view literalizes it in a fight scene with scalpels, fire, and perhaps a martial arts legend.

“It reminded me of Silent Hill 2,” González specifies about the whole film. “I used to play Silent Hill avidly and [Ash] really reminded me of that vibe. [And this] energy was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person perspective in movies. It just gives you a sense of being in it, and also creates so much anxiety. I thought that was dope.”

The connection between Ash and iconic video game imagery isn’t entirely an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming tools when designing visuals for the film: “I spent a lot of time learning Unreal Engine and trying to learn visual effects because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I just wasn’t satisfied with my drawings,” he explains.

Yes, that’s a unique approach for film development, but Ash is an unique take on the proverbial haunted spaceship movie. “The script [written by Jonni Remmler] came like a jigsaw puzzle,” Flying Lotus observes. “It didn’t have to be constructed that way, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, ‘What is this?’”

When Ash begins, González’s character Riya awakens on a desolated shuttle with no clear memory of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for certain is the planet outside is bleakly oppressive, overcast in menacing psychedelic reds and purples. Yet that seems pitcuresque when compared to how seemingly all of Riya’s crew onboard the ship has been wiped out by… something.

“The movie is from Riya’s perspective, and the colors and the visual tone is a reflection of her headspace,” the helmer says about his movie’s evocative look. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she’s dealing with emotionally.”

“It’s purposeful,” González agrees. “The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they’re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance.” It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia doesn’t even know herself.

“She’s sort of like a newborn baby,” González says. “It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron.”

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

“This [script] came to Eiza and I’s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other’s back from the beginning,” Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya doesn’t know anything that is going on, Paul’s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

“When he shows up, he’s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he hasn’t been with the group for some time,” Paul says. “He’s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from [Riya] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he’s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her.”

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film’s composer.

“It’s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together,” Flying Lotus says of the film’s hypnotic soundscape. “The original thing I wanted to do just wasn’t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started [to become] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter‘s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, ‘What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself?’”

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies—as well as independent cinema.

“Independent filmmaking is challenging,” González points out. And with Ash, she says “here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that’s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That’s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking.”

For Flying Lotus, he’s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. “Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in.”

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus’ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

Screenlife films have become a genre of their own in recent years – the premise being that a story is told almost entirely through the lens of a phone, tablet, or computer screen. We’ve seen screenlife horror films like Unfriended and Host, and screenlife thrillers like Searching and Missing, but LifeHack is taking the genre […]

The post New Screenlife Heist Movie Will Scare You Into Changing ALL Your Passwords appeared first on Den of Geek.

The casting process for any movie is a difficult thing, one that involves nuanced factors such as figuring out schedules, availability, chemistry, or even just aligned visions. And then there are times where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a moment when he met Eiza González.

“It was the first thing she said to me,” Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest conversation while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “She said, ‘You know, the script reminds me of Silent Hill.’” The smile practically bursts from the director’s face when the memory comes back. “I was like she’s perfect!”

When you see the finished film, the influences are apt. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery—and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González’s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a movie told entirely from Riya’s subjective point-of-view literalizes it in a fight scene with scalpels, fire, and perhaps a martial arts legend.

“It reminded me of Silent Hill 2,” González specifies about the whole film. “I used to play Silent Hill avidly and [Ash] really reminded me of that vibe. [And this] energy was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person perspective in movies. It just gives you a sense of being in it, and also creates so much anxiety. I thought that was dope.”

The connection between Ash and iconic video game imagery isn’t entirely an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming tools when designing visuals for the film: “I spent a lot of time learning Unreal Engine and trying to learn visual effects because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I just wasn’t satisfied with my drawings,” he explains.

Yes, that’s a unique approach for film development, but Ash is an unique take on the proverbial haunted spaceship movie. “The script [written by Jonni Remmler] came like a jigsaw puzzle,” Flying Lotus observes. “It didn’t have to be constructed that way, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, ‘What is this?’”

When Ash begins, González’s character Riya awakens on a desolated shuttle with no clear memory of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for certain is the planet outside is bleakly oppressive, overcast in menacing psychedelic reds and purples. Yet that seems pitcuresque when compared to how seemingly all of Riya’s crew onboard the ship has been wiped out by… something.

“The movie is from Riya’s perspective, and the colors and the visual tone is a reflection of her headspace,” the helmer says about his movie’s evocative look. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she’s dealing with emotionally.”

“It’s purposeful,” González agrees. “The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they’re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance.” It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia doesn’t even know herself.

“She’s sort of like a newborn baby,” González says. “It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron.”

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

“This [script] came to Eiza and I’s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other’s back from the beginning,” Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya doesn’t know anything that is going on, Paul’s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

“When he shows up, he’s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he hasn’t been with the group for some time,” Paul says. “He’s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from [Riya] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he’s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her.”

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film’s composer.

“It’s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together,” Flying Lotus says of the film’s hypnotic soundscape. “The original thing I wanted to do just wasn’t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started [to become] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter‘s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, ‘What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself?’”

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies—as well as independent cinema.

“Independent filmmaking is challenging,” González points out. And with Ash, she says “here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that’s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That’s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking.”

For Flying Lotus, he’s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. “Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in.”

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus’ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

So like… a unicorn is just a horse with a horn, right? Sure, the mythical beasts are often associated with other supernatural features in the cryptozoological canon. In some stories, they soar through the sky via the power of friendship and rainbows. In others, they grant extended (if cursed) life to the drinker of their […]

The post Death of a Unicorn Review: A24 Offers Bloody, Horn-y Fun appeared first on Den of Geek.

The casting process for any movie is a difficult thing, one that involves nuanced factors such as figuring out schedules, availability, chemistry, or even just aligned visions. And then there are times where it just clicks. The many-hyphenated musical and artistic talent Flying Lotus had exactly such a moment while looking for the lead of his new sci-fi/horror genre-bender, Ash. He had a moment when he met Eiza González.

“It was the first thing she said to me,” Flying Lotus recalls of their earliest conversation while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “She said, ‘You know, the script reminds me of Silent Hill.’” The smile practically bursts from the director’s face when the memory comes back. “I was like she’s perfect!”

When you see the finished film, the influences are apt. Set in a distant future on a strange alien world, Ash is a bizarre vision filled with dread, mystery—and even a dizzying first-person action sequence where González’s protagonist, a woman named Riya, must defend herself against a hostile force. Suddenly, a movie told entirely from Riya’s subjective point-of-view literalizes it in a fight scene with scalpels, fire, and perhaps a martial arts legend.

“It reminded me of Silent Hill 2,” González specifies about the whole film. “I used to play Silent Hill avidly and [Ash] really reminded me of that vibe. [And this] energy was always something that I wanted to do, and I loved the first-person perspective in movies. It just gives you a sense of being in it, and also creates so much anxiety. I thought that was dope.”

The connection between Ash and iconic video game imagery isn’t entirely an accident either. As FlyLo confirms, he worked with gaming tools when designing visuals for the film: “I spent a lot of time learning Unreal Engine and trying to learn visual effects because I wanted to do some pre-visualizations, and I just wasn’t satisfied with my drawings,” he explains.

Yes, that’s a unique approach for film development, but Ash is an unique take on the proverbial haunted spaceship movie. “The script [written by Jonni Remmler] came like a jigsaw puzzle,” Flying Lotus observes. “It didn’t have to be constructed that way, but it just happened to be constructed in a way that was like, ‘What is this?’”

When Ash begins, González’s character Riya awakens on a desolated shuttle with no clear memory of how she got there or even who she is. All she knows for certain is the planet outside is bleakly oppressive, overcast in menacing psychedelic reds and purples. Yet that seems pitcuresque when compared to how seemingly all of Riya’s crew onboard the ship has been wiped out by… something.

“The movie is from Riya’s perspective, and the colors and the visual tone is a reflection of her headspace,” the helmer says about his movie’s evocative look. “I don’t want to spoil too much, but it corresponds to what she’s dealing with emotionally.”

“It’s purposeful,” González agrees. “The director has a visual idea, and we had measured every single part of where her fevers are coming, why they’re coming, and how the colors correlated. That became a roadmap for us to dive into the performance.” It also proved to be an expressionistic way to help the star build a character who due to having amnesia doesn’t even know herself.

“She’s sort of like a newborn baby,” González says. “It was very tender and vulnerable for me as an actress, because I felt like a little girl in many of these scenes, and I think you can see it, especially with Aaron.”

The Aaron in question is Breaking Bad‘s Aaron Paul, an thespian who González has been friends with for years, and whose sense of warmth and familiarity created a great wellspring to build what is ironically a much more strained dynamic onscreen.

“This [script] came to Eiza and I’s desk at the same time, so it was just nice to have each other’s back from the beginning,” Paul tells us about what is almost a two-hander aspect to the film. While Riya doesn’t know anything that is going on, Paul’s character Brion seemingly has all the answers, although he comes into the film as his own mystery.

“When he shows up, he’s been orbital monitoring around the planet, so he hasn’t been with the group for some time,” Paul says. “He’s been on a solo journey in his spaceship by himself doing God knows what. But then he gets an SOS call from [Riya] and he shows up and the entire crew is massacred. So he’s just trying to figure out what the hell happened but then, also if he can trust her.”

Much of the appeal about Ash, though, is about mystery and tone, the unknown and dread. That seeps into even the musical score, which of course is a crucial component for a filmmaker who is also a musician, producer, and the film’s composer.

“It’s funny because I had a vision for it originally, but that changed when I started cutting the movie together,” Flying Lotus says of the film’s hypnotic soundscape. “The original thing I wanted to do just wasn’t working. I had to try a bunch of different stuff. I threw different sounds at the wall, and I started [to become] really obsessed with Halloween at the time. I was watching John Carpenter‘s stuff quite a bit, and I just thought about how when he did Halloween he was up against it for time, and he had to do this soundtrack pretty much by himself. I tried to feel that spirit and thought to myself, ‘What can I do alone in New Zealand with minimal gear? How do I do that thing and still bring something new to it and make it interesting to myself?’”

Whether dealing with the visuals or the music, those types of questions matter because Ash takes advantage of the freedom offered by genre movies—as well as independent cinema.

“Independent filmmaking is challenging,” González points out. And with Ash, she says “here comes someone with a vision and an exciting story. I have been really happy to see that the independent filmmaking is taking a cool turn, because that’s how you create new styles, new visual imagery. That’s how you bring a fresh take into filmmaking.”

For Flying Lotus, he’s just happy to make a genre movie to connect with the audience in a new way. “Genre films are the movies you want to go see on Friday night. Some of them may be forgettable, but you just want to have a good time sometimes and escape the crazy world that we live in.”

With Ash, however, it seems the intent is to escape one crazy world in order to find something crazier, more bizarre, and just maybe dope as hell.

Ash premiered at SXSW on March 11 and opens in theaters on March 21.

The post Ash: Eiza González and Aaron Paul Take Us Inside Flying Lotus’ Psychedelic Sci-Fi Horror appeared first on Den of Geek.

Although The Wheel of Time is filled with antagonists in the form of Darkfriends, Black Ajah, and even the oppressive Seanchan and Whitecloaks, its true “big bads” are the Forsaken, powerful channelers whose bond with the Dark One allows them to live from one Age to the next. Because they are disproportionately more powerful than […]

The post The Wheel of Time Season 3: New Forsaken and Unexpected Alliances Revealed appeared first on Den of Geek.

Anyone familiar with the work of Luis Buñel or John Waters knows that shocking images are nothing new to cinema. But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day also realizes that art and curated choices have nothing on the world wide web. So how does the film American Sweatshop, in which Riverdale star Lili Reinhart plays a content moderator, portray a video so shocking that it leaves her character Daisy visibly shaken? By emphasizing the human aspect.

“There’s a shot of my character’s eyes, with the image being burned into her brain and retinas,” Reinhart says while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “It’s more interesting to see a video that’s traumatizing someone from a different point-of-view than just seeing it on a computer screen. You’re actually seeing how they’re processing it through their eyes.”

Written by Matthew Nemeth and directed by Uta Briesewitz, American Sweatshop follows social media moderator Daisy Moriarty, who at the fictional company of Paladin endures what might be the worst job on the planet: watching, reviewing, and debating whether flagged social media content that has offended someone should be deleted. And when she finds a video that seems to depict a real violent crime, the image becomes imprinted on her mind.

Like many, Reinhart admits she didn’t spend a lot of time considering the daily horrors an online content moderator would face: “I was vaguely familiar with content moderation, but then I found out that actually a friend of mine does that as a part-time job. People walk away feeling fascinated that this job exists, that people sit at a desk and watch videos that you’re not supposed to see, and the horrible effects it can have on their well-being and mental health…. It’s not a job that you have forever and I think a lot of people walk away from it due to the mental downside of watching disturbing videos all day long.”

That surreality of that human element also drove the creatives as they developed the film.

“A lot of the anecdotes in the film are based on real events,” Briesewitz tells us during the conversation. “Matthew Nemeth did research and used articles for the script, I did research and watched a documentary about content moderation called The Cleaners.” However, she also was wary of letting these sources override her own voice as a filmmaker. “I didn’t want to take it much further than that because I felt like I knew what the world was. I wanted to stay focused on our story as well. It gets set in motion at this office, but then there’s a whole other story to it where Daisy goes into the world and tries to do something.

Reinhart had a bit easier job maintaining that balance because she grew up on the internet and didn’t need to do much research to play someone disturbed by anonymous strangers’ posts.

“I grew up watching a lot of things that I shouldn’t have just from being exposed to the internet,” Reinhart admits. “I was on Reddit way too young, saw things on there that a 13-year-old girl shouldn’t see, or no one should see, to be honest. I think we all have that kind of a story and we all have a video or an image or something that we’ve seen that stuck with us, which is sad, but kind of the whole point of the film.” 

For both filmmakers, the process of making the film was a reminder for how the innovation of hte internet has seemingly corresponded with folks feeling more isolated and detached from their world.

“Social media has given us permission to get away with not having human connection,” Reinhart observes. “You can go a whole day without talking to someone in-person because you have connection online. Not that online is a false sense of community, but it’s very different from having an actual community. Culture has shifted where you feel this false sense of closeness because you’re friends with people on Facebook and Instagram, thinking you don’t need to see them in-person anymore because we can just DM every now and then.”

Even though she’s never been much of a social media user, director Briesewitz’s experience of making American Sweatshop has changed even how she interacts with the internet.

“The movie reminded me that we can’t really rely on anybody policing the internet in a right way,” the helmer says. While art can use disturbing images to create a story or a point, the choices are are handled with discretion. Consider the aforementioned image of something being burned into Reinhart’s eyes in one scene. To Briesewitz it would have “been easy for us to make our point by choosing the horrible videos that we are commenting on. I didn’t want people to go and see the movie and think, ‘I wish I’d had a warning that I would watch a beheading, because now I can’t unsee it.’ If we just hinted at the videos via title or just the sound, people will fill in their own horrors.”

It’s the difference between suggesting trauma and inflicting it, which is a very thin line to rely on a small office of entry-level workers to navigate for us. That line has also become sharper and more defined in the mind’s eye of American Sweatshop‘s star.

“I’ve tried to just limit the exposure I have to socials in general,” says Reinhart. “I am trying to make sure what I’m engaging with is positive content and not horrific. [And] the movie has encouraged me to want to connect with my real-world rather than try and rely on social to be connected with human beings. I’d rather keep the in-person connection alive than foster or cater to an online relationship.”

American Sweatshop premiered at SXSW on March 8.

The post Lili Reinhart Reveals Playing a Content Moderator Has Changed Her Relationship with Social Media appeared first on Den of Geek.

Bong Joon-ho has not only never made a bad movie; he has delivered eight feature-length films separated only by degrees of brilliance and your personal preferences. Trying to rank them in any definitive way involves heartbreak and folly, but this is the internet, the home of heartbreak and folly, so here goes. Like many great […]

The post Every Bong Joon-Ho Movie Ranked appeared first on Den of Geek.

Anyone familiar with the work of Luis Buñel or John Waters knows that shocking images are nothing new to cinema. But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day also realizes that art and curated choices have nothing on the world wide web. So how does the film American Sweatshop, in which Riverdale star Lili Reinhart plays a content moderator, portray a video so shocking that it leaves her character Daisy visibly shaken? By emphasizing the human aspect.

“There’s a shot of my character’s eyes, with the image being burned into her brain and retinas,” Reinhart says while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “It’s more interesting to see a video that’s traumatizing someone from a different point-of-view than just seeing it on a computer screen. You’re actually seeing how they’re processing it through their eyes.”

Written by Matthew Nemeth and directed by Uta Briesewitz, American Sweatshop follows social media moderator Daisy Moriarty, who at the fictional company of Paladin endures what might be the worst job on the planet: watching, reviewing, and debating whether flagged social media content that has offended someone should be deleted. And when she finds a video that seems to depict a real violent crime, the image becomes imprinted on her mind.

Like many, Reinhart admits she didn’t spend a lot of time considering the daily horrors an online content moderator would face: “I was vaguely familiar with content moderation, but then I found out that actually a friend of mine does that as a part-time job. People walk away feeling fascinated that this job exists, that people sit at a desk and watch videos that you’re not supposed to see, and the horrible effects it can have on their well-being and mental health…. It’s not a job that you have forever and I think a lot of people walk away from it due to the mental downside of watching disturbing videos all day long.”

That surreality of that human element also drove the creatives as they developed the film.

“A lot of the anecdotes in the film are based on real events,” Briesewitz tells us during the conversation. “Matthew Nemeth did research and used articles for the script, I did research and watched a documentary about content moderation called The Cleaners.” However, she also was wary of letting these sources override her own voice as a filmmaker. “I didn’t want to take it much further than that because I felt like I knew what the world was. I wanted to stay focused on our story as well. It gets set in motion at this office, but then there’s a whole other story to it where Daisy goes into the world and tries to do something.

Reinhart had a bit easier job maintaining that balance because she grew up on the internet and didn’t need to do much research to play someone disturbed by anonymous strangers’ posts.

“I grew up watching a lot of things that I shouldn’t have just from being exposed to the internet,” Reinhart admits. “I was on Reddit way too young, saw things on there that a 13-year-old girl shouldn’t see, or no one should see, to be honest. I think we all have that kind of a story and we all have a video or an image or something that we’ve seen that stuck with us, which is sad, but kind of the whole point of the film.” 

For both filmmakers, the process of making the film was a reminder for how the innovation of hte internet has seemingly corresponded with folks feeling more isolated and detached from their world.

“Social media has given us permission to get away with not having human connection,” Reinhart observes. “You can go a whole day without talking to someone in-person because you have connection online. Not that online is a false sense of community, but it’s very different from having an actual community. Culture has shifted where you feel this false sense of closeness because you’re friends with people on Facebook and Instagram, thinking you don’t need to see them in-person anymore because we can just DM every now and then.”

Even though she’s never been much of a social media user, director Briesewitz’s experience of making American Sweatshop has changed even how she interacts with the internet.

“The movie reminded me that we can’t really rely on anybody policing the internet in a right way,” the helmer says. While art can use disturbing images to create a story or a point, the choices are are handled with discretion. Consider the aforementioned image of something being burned into Reinhart’s eyes in one scene. To Briesewitz it would have “been easy for us to make our point by choosing the horrible videos that we are commenting on. I didn’t want people to go and see the movie and think, ‘I wish I’d had a warning that I would watch a beheading, because now I can’t unsee it.’ If we just hinted at the videos via title or just the sound, people will fill in their own horrors.”

It’s the difference between suggesting trauma and inflicting it, which is a very thin line to rely on a small office of entry-level workers to navigate for us. That line has also become sharper and more defined in the mind’s eye of American Sweatshop‘s star.

“I’ve tried to just limit the exposure I have to socials in general,” says Reinhart. “I am trying to make sure what I’m engaging with is positive content and not horrific. [And] the movie has encouraged me to want to connect with my real-world rather than try and rely on social to be connected with human beings. I’d rather keep the in-person connection alive than foster or cater to an online relationship.”

American Sweatshop premiered at SXSW on March 8.

The post Lili Reinhart Reveals Playing a Content Moderator Has Changed Her Relationship with Social Media appeared first on Den of Geek.

Anyone familiar with the work of Luis Buñel or John Waters knows that shocking images are nothing new to cinema. But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day also realizes that art and curated choices have nothing on the world wide web. So how does the film American Sweatshop, in […]

The post Lili Reinhart Reveals Playing a Content Moderator Has Changed Her Relationship with Social Media appeared first on Den of Geek.

Anyone familiar with the work of Luis Buñel or John Waters knows that shocking images are nothing new to cinema. But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day also realizes that art and curated choices have nothing on the world wide web. So how does the film American Sweatshop, in which Riverdale star Lili Reinhart plays a content moderator, portray a video so shocking that it leaves her character Daisy visibly shaken? By emphasizing the human aspect.

“There’s a shot of my character’s eyes, with the image being burned into her brain and retinas,” Reinhart says while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “It’s more interesting to see a video that’s traumatizing someone from a different point-of-view than just seeing it on a computer screen. You’re actually seeing how they’re processing it through their eyes.”

Written by Matthew Nemeth and directed by Uta Briesewitz, American Sweatshop follows social media moderator Daisy Moriarty, who at the fictional company of Paladin endures what might be the worst job on the planet: watching, reviewing, and debating whether flagged social media content that has offended someone should be deleted. And when she finds a video that seems to depict a real violent crime, the image becomes imprinted on her mind.

Like many, Reinhart admits she didn’t spend a lot of time considering the daily horrors an online content moderator would face: “I was vaguely familiar with content moderation, but then I found out that actually a friend of mine does that as a part-time job. People walk away feeling fascinated that this job exists, that people sit at a desk and watch videos that you’re not supposed to see, and the horrible effects it can have on their well-being and mental health…. It’s not a job that you have forever and I think a lot of people walk away from it due to the mental downside of watching disturbing videos all day long.”

That surreality of that human element also drove the creatives as they developed the film.

“A lot of the anecdotes in the film are based on real events,” Briesewitz tells us during the conversation. “Matthew Nemeth did research and used articles for the script, I did research and watched a documentary about content moderation called The Cleaners.” However, she also was wary of letting these sources override her own voice as a filmmaker. “I didn’t want to take it much further than that because I felt like I knew what the world was. I wanted to stay focused on our story as well. It gets set in motion at this office, but then there’s a whole other story to it where Daisy goes into the world and tries to do something.

Reinhart had a bit easier job maintaining that balance because she grew up on the internet and didn’t need to do much research to play someone disturbed by anonymous strangers’ posts.

“I grew up watching a lot of things that I shouldn’t have just from being exposed to the internet,” Reinhart admits. “I was on Reddit way too young, saw things on there that a 13-year-old girl shouldn’t see, or no one should see, to be honest. I think we all have that kind of a story and we all have a video or an image or something that we’ve seen that stuck with us, which is sad, but kind of the whole point of the film.” 

For both filmmakers, the process of making the film was a reminder for how the innovation of hte internet has seemingly corresponded with folks feeling more isolated and detached from their world.

“Social media has given us permission to get away with not having human connection,” Reinhart observes. “You can go a whole day without talking to someone in-person because you have connection online. Not that online is a false sense of community, but it’s very different from having an actual community. Culture has shifted where you feel this false sense of closeness because you’re friends with people on Facebook and Instagram, thinking you don’t need to see them in-person anymore because we can just DM every now and then.”

Even though she’s never been much of a social media user, director Briesewitz’s experience of making American Sweatshop has changed even how she interacts with the internet.

“The movie reminded me that we can’t really rely on anybody policing the internet in a right way,” the helmer says. While art can use disturbing images to create a story or a point, the choices are are handled with discretion. Consider the aforementioned image of something being burned into Reinhart’s eyes in one scene. To Briesewitz it would have “been easy for us to make our point by choosing the horrible videos that we are commenting on. I didn’t want people to go and see the movie and think, ‘I wish I’d had a warning that I would watch a beheading, because now I can’t unsee it.’ If we just hinted at the videos via title or just the sound, people will fill in their own horrors.”

It’s the difference between suggesting trauma and inflicting it, which is a very thin line to rely on a small office of entry-level workers to navigate for us. That line has also become sharper and more defined in the mind’s eye of American Sweatshop‘s star.

“I’ve tried to just limit the exposure I have to socials in general,” says Reinhart. “I am trying to make sure what I’m engaging with is positive content and not horrific. [And] the movie has encouraged me to want to connect with my real-world rather than try and rely on social to be connected with human beings. I’d rather keep the in-person connection alive than foster or cater to an online relationship.”

American Sweatshop premiered at SXSW on March 8.

The post Lili Reinhart Reveals Playing a Content Moderator Has Changed Her Relationship with Social Media appeared first on Den of Geek.

In the weeks since Eon Productions heads Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson announced they were turning control of the James Bond franchise over to Amazon, the internet has been aflame with pitches for nightmare spin offs. It’s not hard to imagine the streamer green-lighting a drama about the early days of M, a Penguin-style […]

The post A Young James Bond TV Spin-Off? It Already Exists appeared first on Den of Geek.

Anyone familiar with the work of Luis Buñel or John Waters knows that shocking images are nothing new to cinema. But anyone who has been on the internet for more than a day also realizes that art and curated choices have nothing on the world wide web. So how does the film American Sweatshop, in which Riverdale star Lili Reinhart plays a content moderator, portray a video so shocking that it leaves her character Daisy visibly shaken? By emphasizing the human aspect.

“There’s a shot of my character’s eyes, with the image being burned into her brain and retinas,” Reinhart says while visiting the Den of Geek studio at SXSW. “It’s more interesting to see a video that’s traumatizing someone from a different point-of-view than just seeing it on a computer screen. You’re actually seeing how they’re processing it through their eyes.”

Written by Matthew Nemeth and directed by Uta Briesewitz, American Sweatshop follows social media moderator Daisy Moriarty, who at the fictional company of Paladin endures what might be the worst job on the planet: watching, reviewing, and debating whether flagged social media content that has offended someone should be deleted. And when she finds a video that seems to depict a real violent crime, the image becomes imprinted on her mind.

Like many, Reinhart admits she didn’t spend a lot of time considering the daily horrors an online content moderator would face: “I was vaguely familiar with content moderation, but then I found out that actually a friend of mine does that as a part-time job. People walk away feeling fascinated that this job exists, that people sit at a desk and watch videos that you’re not supposed to see, and the horrible effects it can have on their well-being and mental health…. It’s not a job that you have forever and I think a lot of people walk away from it due to the mental downside of watching disturbing videos all day long.”

That surreality of that human element also drove the creatives as they developed the film.

“A lot of the anecdotes in the film are based on real events,” Briesewitz tells us during the conversation. “Matthew Nemeth did research and used articles for the script, I did research and watched a documentary about content moderation called The Cleaners.” However, she also was wary of letting these sources override her own voice as a filmmaker. “I didn’t want to take it much further than that because I felt like I knew what the world was. I wanted to stay focused on our story as well. It gets set in motion at this office, but then there’s a whole other story to it where Daisy goes into the world and tries to do something.

Reinhart had a bit easier job maintaining that balance because she grew up on the internet and didn’t need to do much research to play someone disturbed by anonymous strangers’ posts.

“I grew up watching a lot of things that I shouldn’t have just from being exposed to the internet,” Reinhart admits. “I was on Reddit way too young, saw things on there that a 13-year-old girl shouldn’t see, or no one should see, to be honest. I think we all have that kind of a story and we all have a video or an image or something that we’ve seen that stuck with us, which is sad, but kind of the whole point of the film.” 

For both filmmakers, the process of making the film was a reminder for how the innovation of hte internet has seemingly corresponded with folks feeling more isolated and detached from their world.

“Social media has given us permission to get away with not having human connection,” Reinhart observes. “You can go a whole day without talking to someone in-person because you have connection online. Not that online is a false sense of community, but it’s very different from having an actual community. Culture has shifted where you feel this false sense of closeness because you’re friends with people on Facebook and Instagram, thinking you don’t need to see them in-person anymore because we can just DM every now and then.”

Even though she’s never been much of a social media user, director Briesewitz’s experience of making American Sweatshop has changed even how she interacts with the internet.

“The movie reminded me that we can’t really rely on anybody policing the internet in a right way,” the helmer says. While art can use disturbing images to create a story or a point, the choices are are handled with discretion. Consider the aforementioned image of something being burned into Reinhart’s eyes in one scene. To Briesewitz it would have “been easy for us to make our point by choosing the horrible videos that we are commenting on. I didn’t want people to go and see the movie and think, ‘I wish I’d had a warning that I would watch a beheading, because now I can’t unsee it.’ If we just hinted at the videos via title or just the sound, people will fill in their own horrors.”

It’s the difference between suggesting trauma and inflicting it, which is a very thin line to rely on a small office of entry-level workers to navigate for us. That line has also become sharper and more defined in the mind’s eye of American Sweatshop‘s star.

“I’ve tried to just limit the exposure I have to socials in general,” says Reinhart. “I am trying to make sure what I’m engaging with is positive content and not horrific. [And] the movie has encouraged me to want to connect with my real-world rather than try and rely on social to be connected with human beings. I’d rather keep the in-person connection alive than foster or cater to an online relationship.”

American Sweatshop premiered at SXSW on March 8.

The post Lili Reinhart Reveals Playing a Content Moderator Has Changed Her Relationship with Social Media appeared first on Den of Geek.