Detox

Director Statement

I think most people would agree that the past three years have been pretty… terrifying. The pandemic was awful in a thousand different ways, but as we’ve rounded the corner on the worst of it, one facet of it all has stuck with me. While locked inside our homes, we constantly found ourselves staring at our computers, our TVs, and our phones – sometimes, all three at the same time. A lack of human interaction led to a poor facsimile of the communal experience, with LED screens and “likes” serving as shameful middle men. We became chained to our devices (if we weren’t already), so much so that a digital “self-help” cottage industry arose centered on aiding people in “disconnecting” from their digital dependency. To me, the idea that humans – who have lived without cellphones and tablets and social media for thousands of years – need help taking a break from technology, sounds more like a dystopian nightmare than a reality. Yet, after sharing my insights with writer/producer Wes Hopper, who happens to own an Air BNB and has actually hosted folks striving to escape from their own Instagrams, he confirmed that this is indeed the world we now live in. So naturally, we decided that it only felt right to hang a lantern on the absurdity of it all through the lens of a horror film. By building a setup traditional of the genre – one lone woman heading off to a remote house for a long weekend – and playing with expectations of who that person is and what they find when they arrive, Detox was born, as was a biting satirical take on digital culture and all that comes with it.