Special Report: Appofeniacs (2026)

Music-video veteran Chris Marrs Piliero (The Black Keys, Kesha, Ariana Grande) traces his feature debut, Appofeniacs, to two obsessions: the ease of deepfake manipulation, and apophenia — our compulsion to find connections in things that aren't actually connected. He tells Mike White how fan theories about his own music videos (imagined hidden messages, imagined Illuminati symbolism) convinced him the premise had teeth: a small, trivial fake video of a friend can chain-react into real violence.

Piliero also walks through the guerrilla reality of self-financing a feature that refuses to stay in one location — rewriting scenes around which of his friends' apartments and neighborhood businesses (a coffee shop, a smoke shop) he could talk his way into — and premiering the deepfake-horror film at Fantastic Fest and FrightFest to crowds cheering the gore.