Cracking the Nightmare Code
Director Mark Netter on his new techno-horror
The great science-fiction author Arthur C. Clarke once wrote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." For Mark Netter, director of new techno-terror Nightmare Code, we're in an age of technological sorcery. "We knew how the pulley works. But you have no idea how your phone works."
Netter's debut feature as a director receives its Texas premiere on Sept. 17 as part of science-fiction festival Other Worlds Austin's year-round programming. However, it's already picked up the Philip K. Dick award at the Philip K. Dick Science Fiction and Supernatural Film Festival earlier this year, for its depiction of the birth of a techno-dystopia.
Netter put it bluntly: "Technology will win out." On the positive side, there's the way social media usurped the traditional control of information during the Arab Spring, allowing the world to see what was happening on the streets. "You saw things sneaking out that you never would have seen before." On the darker side, there's the increasing fear (and proven evidence) that technology can be used to control, monitor, and subvert. "You have no idea if the NSA is watching you through your phone, which we know they can do and will do."
That sense of surveillance is constant. The movie is told by splitting the screen into four different images, like monitors at a security station. "The movie teaches you how to watch it," said Netter, although it was a tough learning curve for his cast. "Actors would ask me, 'When am I getting my close up?' And I'd tell them, 'Well, there'll be a scene where you're in front of a camera.'"
