Flyspy
2016 · 21m · UK
Directed by Daniel M. Smith
Greg, a brilliant young inventor, builds an insect-sized robotic fly with a camera to secretly spy on his ex-girlfriend Haley. When he witnesses her new boyfriend abusing her, simply watching is no longer enough.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A stalker-turned-savior narrative wrapped in VR gimmickry could've been insufferable, but Smith actually uses the dual format to weaponize voyeurism itself — the medium becomes complicit in Greg's violation, which most festival darlings would never have the spine to lean into.
The film sits uneasily between tech novelty and moral thriller, and while the VR component feels more conceptual than formally integrated, the narrative itself understands its lineage in the surveillance-as-proxy-for-control subgenre that Hitchcock and De Palma established.
The decision to keep the fly-cam footage degraded and glitchy rather than pristine is what sells the whole thing — it transforms the technological impossibility into something tactile and claustrophobic, and suddenly a $X budget micro-sci-fi feels like it has weight.
Reviews
A pioneering hybrid of traditional film and virtual reality, acclaimed for its innovative ideas across the industry.
Explores that curiosity defining our voyeurism — inspired end, admirable performances.