Memory is a weapon. Light is a lie. That’s the chilling premise behind SHORROUT, a mind-bending sci-fi thriller that drags audiences into a dystopian world where the deadliest threat isn’t what you see—but what you forget.
Directed by visionary newcomer Kael Riven, SHORROUT takes place in the city of Nareth, where strange power outages have begun swallowing entire blocks in total darkness. The government blames infrastructure collapse. The citizens suspect sabotage. But a growing few—those who survive the blackouts—know the terrifying truth: something lives in the shadows, something that erases your memories one by one… until you're no one.
The story follows Kaelen Voss (played by John David Washington), a former neural coder with a fractured past and a fading mind. After narrowly surviving an unexplained blackout in Sector 12, Kaelen wakes to find people he's known for years don’t recognize him—and worse, he doesn't recognize himself in the mirror. Teaming up with Solari, a rogue data-archivist (portrayed by Jessica Henwick), Kaelen dives deep into the underground black-market for memory backups and forbidden tech, seeking the truth behind the SHORROUT phenomenon.
What unfolds is a psychological descent through corrupted memoryscapes, digital phantoms, and haunting urban ruin. The film brilliantly balances sci-fi world-building with a noir atmosphere, asking: If your memories can be stolen, who decides who you are?
The cinematography by Greta Lian is stunning—cold, metallic, and smeared with shadow. Scenes flicker between clarity and distortion, mirroring the protagonist’s unstable sense of identity. The sound design deserves special mention: in a film about sensory deprivation, the use of silence and static becomes more terrifying than any jump scare.
Washington delivers a gripping performance, conveying not just paranoia but a growing, aching emptiness. As Kaelen loses his grip on reality, the audience is taken with him—through shifting timelines, false recollections, and the creeping sense that the SHORROUT might not just be a force outside of us… but something we invited in.
Some viewers may find the film’s nonlinear storytelling and dense lore disorienting, but fans of cerebral sci-fi (think Annihilation, Black Mirror, or Memento) will be enthralled. It’s the kind of film that rewards repeat viewing—and sparks endless theory threads online.
The ending of SHORROUT leaves much unresolved. Kaelen disappears into the shadows—literally—after discovering the SHORROUT is not a being but a distributed consciousness feeding on emotionally charged memory. A potential sequel, Datawake, could explore the rise of “memory cults,” black-market mind resurrection, and the fight to preserve identity in a world where truth can be edited like code.
Solari, now a fugitive, might lead a resistance faction, smuggling real memories to preserve history. The SHORROUT, meanwhile, evolves—no longer erasing memory, but rewriting it.
