Socialphobia

U.S. Premiere

Let’s face it: sooner or later, the Internet is going to kill us all. Whether it’s an innocuous “like” on Facebook or an indiscreet photo on Instagram, social media tags us and our poor choices wherever we go, a blazing electronic footprint that puts us in the crosshairs of an easily incited digital hate machine. In this curdling petri dish of online outrage, a gaggle of Internet Tough Guys lead a cross-platform witch hunt to doxx a girl who just tweeted all the wrong things. And it’s all fun and games, until they walk in on a dead body. The latest from the Korean Academy of Film Arts (KAFA), Socialphobia is an ice-cold indie thriller that traces the guilty steps of a group of desperate dweebs who find themselves caught up in an all-too-real mystery beyond the scope of their webcams. Using real kids and real locations, and shorn of big-budget artifice, it’s daylight noir by way of FaceTime. When an unknown tormentor turns the tables on these misogynistic keyboard warriors, all their everyday hypocrisies come spilling out of the closet, and no amount of mealy-mouthed excuses will bring back the dead. Other message movies show us who we’d like to be, but Socialphobia tells us exactly who we are.

Presented with the support of Korean Cultural Service New York.