Chicago directors are leaning into film's favorite new genre: the tech bubble-inspired horror comedy
Cautionary satires by two Chicago filmmakers this fall draw inspiration from the city’s tech sector. In their movies, Brandon Daley and Jake Myers both observe characters seeking financial salvation in a shiny new bubble.
Daley's “$POSITIONS!” follows a blue collar worker in debt who risks all on crypto currency. In Myers’ “Kombucha” a struggling musician gets a corporate gig at a company that makes a bacteria-based beverage but creates a comic HR horror show.
Both locally sourced and set films screen at the 32nd Chicago Underground Film Festival, which opens Wednesday and runs through Sept. 21. Co-founded by Bryan Wendorf, the 2025 edition of this maverick nonprofit fest lines up 26 features and 38 shorts (lengths range from two minutes to over three hours). Wendorf expects about 60 filmmakers to attend audience talkbacks after showing their work.
Sun-Times film critic Roger Ebert wrote in 1996: “A ticket to the Chicago Underground Film Festival doesn’t just get you admission to the films; it’s admission to a subculture.” The fest still hypes its "genre-defying, groundbreaking” fare and carries the requisite warning: “Some films in our program contain mature themes or challenging content… viewer discretion is advised.”
Daley admits his film "$Positions" indeed challenges audiences: “We get walkouts a lot,” said the Salina, Kansas native, who double-majored in film and economics at Northwestern University. “People just walk out of the movie in the middle `cause it gets too anxiety inducing.” At an Austin, Texas festival, “One of those people walked back in for the Q&A so she could tell me that she didn't like the film. And that was cool.”
One arguably gross scene — perhaps inspired by the 1995 film “Billy Madison” starring Adam Sandler — contains urine. “I've seen that movie hundreds of times,” said Daley. “I aspire to make movies like ‘Billy Madison’ but I would like to make things that are grounded in something deeper.”
Daley dabbled in crypto during the pandemic. “I view crypto as being a kind of chaotic neutral agent in my life and in the world,” said the 35-year-old filmmaker. “I wanted to make a movie about small town people and how they are viewing this as their way to get out of poverty. I would much rather it be crypto than Fentanyl.”
While Daley draws upon hardships of his Midwest family — and dedicates his film to them – Myers, an Ottawa, Ill. native who will turn 40 at his Chicago Underground Film Fest showcase, incorporates his own high tech experiences on the coast. He had hoped to make it in Hollywood after making three films here that went nowhere.
“I did live in L.A for a year and I was slated to direct a movie, but you realize L.A. wants you to do anything other than direct a movie,” said Myers, whose day job now is teaching video production to high school students. “I ended up doing motion graphics and the money was great, but that wasn't why I went there.”
Los Angeles at least supplied material for “Kombucha,” co-written with Geoff Bakken. The toxic ingredient in Myers’ horror exercise is found in the bottles of blood-specked bacterial beverage. A struggling musician enters a high tech culture where microdosing and Ketamine are trending. He is offered a startling $107K salary as a Culture Consultant at Symbio, a B2B consulting firm. A corporate office showroom at 111 South Wacker functioned as Myers’s set.
After dutifully drinking the office brand of kombucha and undergoing body remakes, Symbio’s creativity-enhanced employees are oddly clone-like.
The boss tells new hires: “One of the great tragedies of our time is how the underemployed liberal arts majors are toiling away in menial jobs, distracted by dreams of stardom when they really have no chance of success. Meanwhile, the corporate world is run by finance and engineering majors with zero imagination or empathy.”
Myers cites Spike Jonze’s film “Adaptation” as a big influence. “It was all about storytelling and it was simultaneously experimental with all of these heady ideas and also just really stupid characters and really, like, impulsive characters that couldn't control themselves,” he said. “You don't have to be mean to your viewer. Like, you should give them something. You need to make something that actually has some kind of visceral response with people.”
Viscera is indeed delivered.