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Thank the sky of cinema, that light in the dark and the source of all horror. It means that if we agree to do something, it means that we have done the same thing. That we live in the Matrix. That the CIA killed JFK. That our wife is a robot and our boss is Andromedan. There are also Escher-style staircases under the Tokyo subway and a disembodied zombie leg walking through Brazilian parks.
What should we do if our trusted friend says all these things? Can we be happy or surprised, enlightened or afraid? Can we even consider them as reliable friends?
“People have a right to know the truth,” said a young whistleblower in Steven Spielberg’s magazine Disclosure Daya line that resonates with thousands of whistleblowers. As played by Josh O’Connor, the hero Daniel Kellner has a bag of government secrets that confirms the presence of aliens and points to a sinister government cover-up. The Day of Revelation is a myth, but it provides insider knowledge. The 79-year-old director – the most trusted type in Hollywood – also appears in the trailer to confirm the film’s authenticity. He separates himself between the crop circles and the air, commenting on what’s going on as an official news anchor. He said: “Wouldn’t it be nice for people to know that all this is true?”
We are not alone, Spielberg tells us – and even, for that reason, it is his film. Disclosure Day it’s just the biggest and weirdest of a series of conspiracy stories that harkens back to 1970s classics The Parallax View, Soylent Green, Capricorn One and The Conversation. These modern descendants tell different stories and wander down different rabbit holes. But they all speak a language of distance and distrust and seem to be searching for the ultimate truth to reveal.
In Yorgos Lanthimos’s Bugonia, I am convinced that the world’s leading figures are real guests in disguise. In the Olivia Wilde episode To callthat is a dangerous comparison of the sex of the neighbors. In the upcoming Wild Horse Nine, it’s the hidden dark treasures of the US’s cold war past. Martin McDonagh’s comedy-thriller casts Sam Rockwell and John Malkovich as a pair of CIA veterans, spinning their wheels on Easter Island as they prepare for their next secret mission. “Do you start to wonder if you’re not worrying enough?” asks Malkovich at one point. It is a vague question. Symbolically or not, everyone is wearing tinfoil hats.
Is this common? Do all these pictures match? Common sense, our trusty friend, tells us that life is random and unpredictable, and that we often make up our own minds. But this conspiracy theory is like a man flirting with each other, who keeps walking down the street to convince us that this is not true. Everything is connected, part of the great design. “No incident, honey,” explains the wild-eyed father in the new Netflix video. Of course. These amazing inventions, therefore, are all here for a reason. They have a message for us, if only we would be quiet and listen.
“I found a place,” whispers Chiwetel Ejiofor, who plays a furniture salesman interesting Backrooms. They can’t be specific, because the area is private and doesn’t appear on any map. It is a system of corridors and workplaces, at once sterile and morbid, that hides in plain sight. If you believe the odds, Backrooms was led by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, who tested the idea as a popular online series. If you believe the parts of the fanbase, it was a shadow directed by Osgood Perkins, its 52-year-old producer. Therefore, it should be keeping only one secret.
Backrooms is the best paranoid conspiracy story, because it doesn’t feel the need to fill in all the details that have gone wrong. It’s scary, strange and unashamedly disturbing. It’s just a cinematic, ready-made metaphor. The back rooms are behind a lighted window or screen. It could be videos, or TikTok, or dark corners of the internet. “It’s like a maze,” marvels Ejiofor, as he pushes on the hinges and begins to enter. “It just keeps going.”
No one has failed to ignore human wisdom, HL Mencken used to say. But he rarely lost money by ignoring his amazing power. Moviegoers crave magic and spectacle, knowledge and comfort. The 2024 survey showed this 61% of Americans believe in spirits57% of aliens and 70% of the devil. Very few also believe that they have been lied to by countless elites. According to a YouGov poll, 18% think the 1969 moon landing was a hoax, 20% The Covid vaccine contains microchips and 29% that voting machines were programmed to change votes in the 2020 US election. Mix these niche interests together, of course, and eventually they will change. According to 2024 scholarship and the CHIP50 project, 78.6% of US citizens agree with at least one conspiracy theory. It’s a big, thriving market for long stories and snake oil.
Staying on top of Covid, Ari Aster’s Eddington casts Joaquin Phoenix as a small-town sheriff who runs for mayor. He is an anti-mask libertarian who loves his country, hates Black Lives Matter and sports a sign on his car that says, “YOUR (sic) MADE”. Therefore, it is a symbol of the culture of conspiracy that has come from the cold – which has been integrated with social networks and a handheld device. Eddington despises the world, but it is his own brand.
The films of the 70’s made a success of resistance. They were a total rejection of the tired messages of the government, built on a strong opposition to failed and weak institutions. I’m not sure the same can be said for today’s movies. The mood is very cloudy and the news is full of flak. No modern filmmaker, perhaps, speaks the language of conspiracy better and louder than the White House itself. Donald Trump speaks to the deep world from behind the desk of Resolute and affects what happens to the dispossessed. These people are right to force revenge on the crooks who oppress them. But they can trust no one but him, their protector, the conspirator-in-chief.
“Flooding in this area is bad,” says Steve Bannon, The president is sometimes a strategist and svengali. A stage-driven plot can act as a welcome distraction, or a cover for incompetence. Disinformation makes voters confused and tired.
The best crime stories point the way to the exit door, meaning freedom, which is good. But this kind of thunder has been stolen and the way forward is unknown. Bugonia is a good film and Backrooms is even better. Both, however, feel like offshoots of the Trump Cinematic Universe, not really different from the persuasive theory that Jim Carrey sent his friend to the César awards and that Eyes Wide Shut was a warning about Jeffrey Epstein.
In the US, Disclosure Day coincided with the White House’s release of declassified UFO files (“exciting and very important,” Trump said). This led to speculation online that the release dates were coordinated as part of a similar profit campaign. Not true, Spielberg said; just wild tales. His video did not support the Trump administration.
Are all these red pills connected? Tangentially, of course, yes. Are there advanced designs? Almost no. Movies are kneejerk responses to the foreign world. He is always quarrelsome and interested in people, as evidence shows that he once roamed the forest in search of new business. Conspiracy theories give the illusion of order and control. They provide assurance of the matter; the idea that life is meaningful. This is another way of saying they are fake, a lie. What’s more offensive: thinking the government is harboring foreigners or admitting they aren’t? What is scarier: believing that strangers want to talk to us or thinking that they won’t?
Are we being paranoid enough? Thomas Pynchon – the undisputed champion of the conspiracy genre – presents a situation that is even worse than paranoia: a paranoiac world in which nothing connects to anything else, where there is no lock to open or light to reveal the truth. It’s a culture, he says, “most of us can’t stand for long”. People need twists and turns, jokes and revelations. Spielberg is an old master and he already knows this. So is Lanthimos and Aster is the 20-year-old director of Backrooms. Likewise, Trump.
