This starts by introducing us to Lenore (Ruby Duncan), a high-profile influencer whose brand is built entirely on manufactured outrage and hyper-curated narcissism. When she vanishes, we meet our protagonist, Max Wren (Nicholas Jaquinot), who sees her loss as a way to become the main character in a true-crime story that is his real life. He starts digging into her digital footprint, hoping to find a secret to keep his obsession alive.

Instead, his screen-addicted life turns against him. The more he searches for her truth, the more the film peels back his own layers, revealing a man who has replaced his soul with algorithmic consumption and so many sins. By the third act, he’s not just hunting a missing person; he’s running from the literal and metaphorical monstrosities of his own sins.

Lenore leans heavily into the desktop or screenlife subgenre but avoids the clean, sterile look it often has. Instead, it opts for a glitchy, corrupted-file aesthetic with heavy chromatic aberration and frame-dropping that mimics a hard drive in distress. The title itself is a nod to Poe, obviously, but here the Lenore isn’t a lost love; she’s an unattainable digital ghost. It’s a clever subversion: the fan doesn’t want her back; he wants the idea of her back, and he’s willing to burn his reality down to get it.

Lenore isn’t a movie you watch to feel good; it’s the movie you watch when you want to look at your phone, feel a sudden wave of nausea and throw it across the room. It’s a bleak, hyper-modern descent into madness that fits right in with our obsession with the people we’ll never actually meet.

You can watch this either in-person or virtually at the Chattanooga Film Festival. For more info, visit the official site.