When a vapid influencer is caught up in a botched incel heist, she discovers her own inner monster when the ordeal is live-streamed to a blood-thirsty audience.

When self-absorbed lifestyle influencer Melanie is invited to the launch of an illustrious new social media experiment by its charismatic CEO, she believes she’s about to be internet’s most cherished and beloved new star.

After arriving at the new campus in Dublin’s tech docklands, she becomes the pioneering vessel for The Hive’s 24/7 live-stream, launching the new frontier of social media immersion to a captivated, adoring audience.

The party starts with a select group of Hive employees but tonight clashes with someone else’s big plans. As delusional incels botch a kidnapping of the CEO, they besiege the start-up’s campus and Melanie’s live-stream provides an apt platform for a sick moral game of their design:

Who lives, and who gets “cancelled”?

Hostages are then pitted against each other as The Hive - the growing audience of engaged and ruthlessly bored content addicts - must decide who lives or dies.

DIRECTOR’S INTENT

The internet is a violent, colourful and sparkling hellscape that has become an emotional boxing ring of tormented individuals, and I wanted to make THE HIVE as a hyper-stylised, immersive satirical siege thriller about this. Between the culture wars of extreme views, the processing of personal trauma for likes, and the loss of identity as our lives are mercilessly packaged into content, THE HIVE is an allegory for this philosophical crisis. With a central tension of “stay alive, or get cancelled”, the internet will ultimately decide the fate of these flawed characters, with our central character Melanie going through the biggest transformation from social media darling to violent avenger.

Neon-drenched, synth-soaked and ultra-violent, THE HIVE aims to create a hyper-sensory experience for the audience, transcending them into a virtual liminal world. While it takes place in the real world, there’s still an elevated quality to its setting, promoting the idea that this is a virtual manifestation of an online realm of colourful sensory overload. It’s chaotic, full of overwhelming audiovisual elements, from a tech house score to disorientating kinetic camera angles. Think GOOD TIME by way of CLIMAX in a heightened futuristic dreamscape.

At its heart, THE HIVE is about how we are all more alike than what sets us apart in that lonely search for humanity in an inhuman realm. And with social media, we are all playing a losing game with a system that bleeds our humanity dry for the endless cycle of content.

RIOGHNACH NI GHRIOGHAIR, 2024