Jessie T. Usher, Brett Gelman, Taye Diggs, Torrey Lawrence and Brooke Anne Smith have joined the cast of Syndetic, a psychological sci-fi thriller that has already completed filming in Los Angeles. The project marks the feature directorial debut of Blake Linder.
Written by Jayme LaForest, Syndetic centres on Richard Thompson, played by Lawrence, a former Marine and network administrator whose unemployment, addiction and estrangement from his two sons leave him vulnerable to an unusual offer. That offer comes from Neural Hive, through the disarmingly genial Dr. Carnegie, played by Gelman. Carnegie recruits Richard into an experimental programme that uses human brains as individual nodes within a distributed computing network designed to harness the mind’s natural capacity for prediction and pattern recognition.
Smith plays Kylie O’Reilly, described as an omnipresent motivational figure within the programme whose relentless positivity becomes increasingly unsettling as the story unfolds. Meanwhile, Usher and Diggs play two detectives working to piece together Richard’s disjointed and unreliable testimony after the fact, framing much of the film’s mystery around the question of what exactly happened to him inside the programme.
Speaking about the project, Linder said the film reflects his longstanding interests as a storyteller.
“I’ve always been drawn to stories that leave audiences asking difficult questions, and Syndetic does exactly that,” he said. “I wanted to blend grounded suspense with psychological horror to explore where our relationship with technology could lead if we stop questioning the systems we choose to trust.”
Syndetic is not Linder’s first project with LaForest. The pair previously collaborated on the short film Father Figure, which they have also been developing into a separate feature-length thriller. Linder, a Los Angeles-based filmmaker, studied at Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. He first built an audience creating content on YouTube before moving into narrative filmmaking, bringing experience in both digital media and traditional production to his feature directorial debut.
Ryan Broomberg serves as cinematographer. LaForest is producing through his Fall Risk Entertainment banner, alongside Jason Short through Short Films, with Linder also producing through Linder Productions.
Usher is best known for playing A-Train across all five seasons of Prime Video’s The Boys, and also appeared in this year’s Smile sequel. Gelman has built a strong genre and comedy résumé with credits including Stranger Things, Fleabag and the recent horror film Wild Things. Diggs is a familiar presence across film and television and currently stars in the drama series His, Hers, Ours. Lawrence recently starred in Bring the Law, while Smith is known for her role in Tyler Perry’s Too Close to Home.
With production already wrapped and a premise combining corporate technology paranoia with psychological horror, Syndetic is shaping up as a distinctive feature debut for Linder, backed by a cast spanning genre television, prestige drama and studio comedy. No release date has been announced yet.