Fantastic Fest 2025: Director Chris Marrs Piliero Discusses Appofeniacs, AI’s Impact, Avril Lavigne, & More Hot Takes
With an ever-changing climate to so many industries, artificial intelligence poses a great threat in the midst of it all. Throughout the years, there’s been an ongoing debate to decide whether AI is useful or detrimental to today’s world, leading many to consider its future. For director Chris Marrs Piliero, he puts his thoughts to the silver screen in Appofeniacs, an ensemble horror movie about the warnings of AI’s harm to society.
Appofeniacs isn’t your usual horror film: instead, it takes a unique turn in establishing multiple storylines, all of which involve some form of deepfake. What results is a gory and intense thriller that keeps viewers on their toes with some particular character choices. To get better insight into what Appofeniacs has to offer, I got to speak with Chris Marrs Piliero about his vision for this film and how his work in the music industry influenced this project!
“I would say that I’m really fascinated with this technology and the incredible speed at which it is progressing,” Piliero began. “When I first saw deepfakes back in 2018, there was an immediate fascination with it and recognition of ‘This is gonna be used nefariously.’ I felt it’d be a really interesting and fun film to make and a horror story to make.”
“On the grander scale of real life, I find it really interesting,” Piliero added. “People just fall back on their confirmation bias and will often not put in the time to determine whether or not something is real or something is factual [or] if it kind of aligns with how we’re feeling. We kind of give it a pass and embrace it more.”
Piliero also went in-depth into how the 2023 writers and actors’ strikes affected his film. The issue of artificial intelligence’s integration played an important role throughout the strikes’ duration. “To be honest the story that I was writing was this story before those strikes even happened because I could foresee what was coming,” Piliero recalled. “When the strikes happened in 2022, that was something that I definitely saw as being an issue. Even during those strikes, there were split crowds of people declaring what a big issue it is. I feel like even during that, there was still some like downplaying, whatnot. It was a serious issue. “
“There’s always going to be some people who downplay how detrimental a certain technology in the future is going to be,” Piliero added. “I guess the reason why I’ve always felt strongly about what it will be is the fact that it’s always learning so fast and it’s always learning off of what it’s learned. It just moves at an incredible speed of progress because it’s getting so smart and then it can immediately go back and get smarter off of that smart that it just achieved.”
On the film itself, Appofeniacs has an unusual narrative setup considering its ensemble cast of characters. However, Piliero was really interested in taking this approach due to his love for “jumping” to different points of the story. “The idea for the film was floating in my brain for several years and it wasn’t clicking and then at the end of like 2022, it just clicked,” Piliero said. “It all suddenly made sense of, ‘Oh, this is how I wanted to tell this story and I want to spread it out.’ I didn’t know what level I wanted to be [in terms of] jumping around and whatnot. That kind of just happened as I was writing. I knew that I wanted to tell different stories about how Duke messes around with different groups.”
Before working on Appofeniacs, Piliero was a prominent music video director for some of the world’s most influential artists. Though each music video he directed had its own visual style, he described the influence of those videos on Appofeniacs’s aesthetic to be subconscious. “I feel that over the years, you just naturally develop a certain style and subconscious approach to things,” Piliero explained. “There’s definitely several moments of intention throughout the film with certain and all of that, but they are interweaved with a lot of subconscious decisions that connect the muscles.”
“As far as music goes, I love music and it’s definitely been something that’s been a part of my life since being a music video director and spending so much time on actual songs,” Piliero added. “However, I would say overall it’s probably more subconscious.”
Notably, Piliero has worked with artists like Ariana Grande, Britney Spears, Avril Lavigne, and much more. When asked about if he’d like to bring the stories from his music videos into actual films, the director believed in the possibility. “The majority of my music videos are little short stories,” Piliero said. “Legitimate short films. I enjoyed the concepts that I came up with for those videos and I enjoyed telling those little nuggets of stories.”
“There’s so many fun ones there that I could explore like Ke$ha at the club with unicorns [in “Blow”] and James Van Der Beek,” Piliero continued. “There’s a crazy story to be made out of that. With Britney [Spears], we made some really outrageous dream thing [with “Criminal”] that I wouldn’t necessarily be able to turn that into a full fledged story, but that approach could be done in a dream sequence in a film or whatnot.”
Piliero further reflected on one particular music video he directed: “I loved the crazy world that we created for Avril [Lavigne]’s “Rock N Roll” video. Where there’s just like a weird pseudo Mad Max-y, Tank Girl, comic book-y type crazy world. There’s a lobster that threatens to stab you with a little switchblade!”
Additionally, there were many inspired cosplay props presented throughout Appofeniacs, which is still in Piliero’s hands. He also still retains many of the props from his previous works as well. “I’m very big on trying to make sure I save as much as possible,” Piliero affirmed. “I do keep some of the props to my films. For example, the Avril Lavigne music video, I have that lobster. I’m like, ‘Yeah, I have a ton of things that I’ve saved for sure!’”
Appofeniacs premiered at Fantastic Fest 2025 on September 20.
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Christopher Gallardo is a freelance entertainment writer and critic. While not running The Reel Roller, Chris can be found writing reviews and breakdowns on all things films and TV. Outside of entertainment writing, he’s currently taking classes for a Bachelor’s of Science with a minor in Digital Media & Journalism. Plus, he loves Percy Jackson, animated films and shows, and Fallout! Follow Christopher on Instagram & X.