(2018)

Submitted by Jeremy

Matias O’Brien (Colin Woodell) finds a laptop at a cafe to use for a new app he is designing for his deaf girlfriend Amaya (Stephanie Nogueras). She is upset with him because she thinks the app is only convenient for him to communicate with her, and not for her to communicate with him. After she stops talking to him, Matias enters a Skype call with his friends – Damon, AJ, Serena, Nari, and Lexx – for game night. (Andrew Lees, Connor Del Rio, Rebecca Rittenhouse, Betty Gabriel and Savira Windyani). He starts to receive weird messages meant for the laptop’s previous owner, “Norah C. IV”.

Norah C. IV is really the fake name of someone going under the alias Charon IV, a member of a cult of sadistic hacker known as The Circle. They kidnap girls and share videos of them getting tortured in exchange for crypto-currency. Charon IV’s laptop contains a number of videos like that, so he threatens to kill Amaya if Matias doesn’t return the laptop. He convinces Amaya to go to his house so that the exchange can be made. Matias then moves Charon IV’s money to his own account to ensure that Amaya is safe and that one of the kidnapped girls, Erica Dunne, is returned safely. This move upsets the other Charons, who then target Matias and his friends.

Lexx is pushed off a building to her death. AJ is killed by the police when the Charons send them a fake phone call by using audio clips from his YouTube videos to make them think that he is going to shoot up the mall. Serena is forced to choose between Nari and her dying mother, and when she fails, the Charons cut off her mom’s life support, push Nari in front of a train, and kill Serena in her home. Matias rushes to find Amaya while Damon tries to get the Charons by saying he recorded the whole thing. HOWEVER, this is exactly what the Charons were counting on. They intended for Matias to get the laptop and move the money into his account so that they can frame him and his friends for the crime. Damon is then hung by the neck as the Charons write a fake suicide note/confession.

Matias attempts to find Amaya, but the Charons get to him first and bury him alive. They even prevent him from reaching out to Amaya on Facebook, dooming him to slowly suffocate underground.

NOTE: This movie is being shown with alternate endings at different theaters. In the other version, Matias is simply hit by a truck at the end…not buried alive.