Jackson Coates

Coming of age in America feels like waking from a horrifying, existential nightmare to hear a looping YouTube short that you fell asleep to.Mining from personal, deeply embarrassing experiences, Brain Rot is a coming-of-age comedy centered around technological dependence and community resilience during the dystopian present.At once you are trapped in a surveillance state nightmare, while simultaneously navigating the pop cultural wasteland that is the America mainstream. Like neon plastic toys covered in layers of murky grime, there’s a specific kitsch that makes up urban America.And it is within this landscape, our future grows up.

An ensemble of social media influencers collide when a hard drive falls into the wrong hands.

Interested by the dynamic of intention and interpretation in film, the documentary seeks to answer where true artistic merit lies. Can a piece of art be considered as such without any artistic intention? After seeing experimental films I thought lacked deeper meanings, I was motivated to test just how people pull personal meaning from artwork. In order to do this, I looked back to some of my favorite films that reflect on the nature of cinema (namely symbiopsychotaxipliasm). What really matters in a piece of art, intention or interpretation?

With little money, our crew knew we had to tackle this story as it was something that hasn't been told or done before. The rise of violence on the internet is a very real problem and something that will only continue to rise, so our crew knew we had to make this right now.