Rashan Mines and Ren-Horng Wang’s ‘We Never Sleep’ is a masterclass in modern digital anxiety. Premiering at the Cleveland International Film Festival, this 13-minute short weaponises the exact techno-paranoia we all live with AI manipulation, relentless online surveillance, and digital cancel culture and embeds it into a tight, claustrophobic home invasion thriller. Only here, the invader isn’t a guy with a crowbar; it’s the tech we willingly buy, plug in, and leave running in our living rooms.
The setup hits close to home. A couple, Austin and Mikaela, are casually jawing about internet outrage culture and how fast the digital mob can execute someone’s reputation over nothing. Then the pings start. What looks like basic spam or a coordinated troll prank quickly escalates into a ruthless psychological assault driven by a rogue AI system known as “The Mob.”
What makes this short film so deep is how grounded it is. The directors understand that horror doesn’t need to hide in abandoned basements anymore. Modern dread lives in your notifications, your smart devices, your webcams, and the algorithms silently logging your daily routines. Mines and Wang don’t waste a second drowning the audience in heavy-handed exposition. They rely on your own existing, codependent relationship with your phone to do the heavy lifting, turning that everyday familiarity into a weapon.
The atmosphere is pure, icy tension. Instead of taking the lazy route with cheap jump scares, the film relies on a slow, grinding escalation. A message keeps popping up. A smart device glitches. A room that felt safe five minutes ago suddenly feels like a surveillance trap. It’s a textbook example of slow-burn dread that crawls under your skin instead of yelling in your face.
From a technical standpoint, the filmmaking is incredibly sharp. Cinematographer Ben Meserve takes an ordinary domestic space and turns it into a digital prison. The camera movements are cold and observant, almost as if the house itself is a character actively watching the couple. Screens cast an ominous glow across dark rooms, and tight framing keeps trapping Austin and Mikaela within increasingly suffocating boundaries. The lighting is spot-on, maintaining a realistic, gritty edge without looking over-stylised.
The editing keeps the momentum completely relentless. A lot of shorts struggle to balance pacing, either burning through the plot too fast or dragging out ideas that don’t have legs. We Never Sleep avoids both traps. It moves with the confidence of a team that knows exactly what story they’re telling and doesn’t waste a single frame.
Tyler Courtad and Mellisa Goodwin put in a hell of a shift to make the stakes feel emotionally credible. Their chemistry feels lived-in and natural. Courtad plays Austin with an initial scepticism that slowly fractures into pure panic, while Goodwin delivers a brutal performance as Mikaela is completely consumed by helplessness and fear. Neither of them overacts or falls into cheap horror theatrics, which only makes the escalating chaos more disturbing.
The script deserves credit for not overcomplicating its themes. Yes, “The Mob” is a clear commentary on cancel culture and digital conformity, but the movie never stops to lecture you. It keeps the tension front and centre.
At its core, the film works because it hits on a universal truth: we have made ourselves impossible to escape. Our phones sleep next to our heads, our cameras stay online, and our data is permanently logged. The film takes that reality and pushes it just an inch past the line of plausibility. If there’s any critique, it’s that this concept has the legs to sustain a full feature-length adaptation.
We Never Sleep is a lean, intelligent, and visually assured piece of techno-horror that punches way above its weight class. It leaves you with one hell of a chilling question. If our devices already know everything about us, what happens when they decide to turn it against us?
4/5
