Posted in: Exclusive, Horror, Interview, Movies | Tagged: A.I., artificial intelligence, Asterlight, Freestyle Digital Media, interview, Justin Gallaher, Motion Detected, Natasha Esca

Motion Detected Dir Justin Gallaher on A.I. Contemporary Inspiration

Justin Gallaher spoke to Bleeding Cool about his debut feature in Freemantle's sci-fi A.I. tech thriller Motion Detected, WGA strike & more.

Before director Justin Gallaher's feature debut in the upcoming Motion Detected, his only experience was writing shorts in Nacho House (2016), The Hoaxing (2018), and Break In. Coincidentally, the emergence of artificial intelligence in the world of technology and its slow integration into our world became fertile ground for his horror film that follows Eva (Natasha Esca), who narrowly escaped being murdered during a recent terrifying home invasion in Mexico City. She and her husband decide to relocate to Los Angeles, where she can recuperate. When her husband must travel for business, she's left alone in an unfamiliar place and suffers from paranoia. The smart home security system consoles her, but the technology is challenging to master, and she starts to wonder if it will keep her safe or take over her life. Gallaher spoke to Bleeding Cool about working with co-director and co-writer Sam Roseme, why he chose A.I. as his subject, and how he felt about the current controversy regarding the WGA Strike.

Motion Detected: Justin Gallaher's Cautionary Tale

What's the inspiration behind 'Motion Detected?'
Gallaher: The inspiration was an event that our co-writer, co-director Sam Roseme had where he had a faulty alarm system that kept giving him alerts that told him his back house had some motion detected back there at three in the morning. He would go back like, "What's going on? Is there something out here?" Scared at that time of day, but nothing was wrong. We took that, and it was like, "This thing could kind of drive you literally insane," and then we mined that, explored it, and we were like, "What if it was evil A.I.?" and that's where we landed.

When playing around with the AI portion of the premise, was there any inspiration you drew upon or from personal experience?
We are being dialed into the news cycle like we had a lot of stuff written in there about this neighbor network, which is a fictional platform based on a sort of a next-door citizen type thing where we get caught up in things happening around. It builds our own paranoia or everything you hear about the Cambridge Analytica scandal with Facebook and how the media constantly manipulate privacy concerns. All those things were factors in creating this story.

We have a WGA strike going on right now, and one of the central contention points is how studios want to integrate more A.I. on their end. As a creator, how does it feel living in that world where that's one of the things that could become a reality? Do you feel it could be used for force of good, or do you think it's a Pandora's Box?
That's a highly complex question and tough to unpack. We're all waiting to see where this goes. I personally played around with ChatGPT and some of the other things, and I found them useful, but I don't find them to be a tool that would replace any of the work I would be doing. I used it today to shorten a paragraph I needed to, but it didn't work that well. I was like, "I could have done a better job." I understand what you could possibly do with it. I'm not personally worried right now, but some of the stuff that I've read by other people who have done a lot more thinking about it than I am, they're alarmed by it. It's worth thinking about. I wouldn't use it to come up with my next idea, but I might use it to enhance my idea, right? If that makes sense. It's like I'm not scared of it, but I'm also not enthusiastic about it either. I'm watching it.

Motion Detected, which also stars Carlo Mendez, Julie Brister, Roland Buck III, Bob Clendenin, Kimberli Flores, and Katelyn MacMullen, is available on-demand and digital.

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