In Decibel, a Musical Sci-Fi Horror Film, A.I. Helps Steal a Singer’s Soul [Video]

When Decibel writer-producers Stephen Christensen and Matt Wise started work on the film — about a young musician forced to compose songs with intrusive help from A.I. — it felt like pure sci-fi. But as director Zac Locke explained at a FilmQuest screening, it now feels pretty realistic.

Locke remembers that his first reaction to reading the script, around January 2020, was “what is all this? Could this happen? It was in the future.” But with all that’s changed in the intervening years, including rapid changes in artificial intelligence, the film is now set very much in the present.

Decibelfollows talented but struggling singer-songwriter Scout (Aleyse Shannon), who is invited to work with a groundbreaking, hitmaking producer named Donna (Stefanie Estes) whose interests in music and medical technology overlap. Scout is invited to a state-of-the-art studio in the desert, where she hits it off with engineer Griff (Colby Groves.) But things take …