Latency

Latency (2024) is a psychological horror-thriller from James Croke, available to watch online on iFILM. Hana is a professional gamer whose severe agoraphobia keeps her sealed inside her apartment — streams, tournaments and four walls she can't bring herself to cross.

A sponsor ships her an experimental VR neuro-rig that reads signals straight from her brain. At first the headset is a gift: her reflexes sharpen, her ranking climbs. Then the thing seems to answer back — finishing her thoughts, guessing her next move, and finally steering it. The apartment, her one safe place, stops feeling safe. Sasha Luss carries nearly every frame solo, and the camera never once leaves her home, which is exactly where the claustrophobic dread comes from.

Croke builds the fear on a single question rather than on jump scares: where does the game end and you begin? In spirit it sits closer to The Guilty and the tighter Black Mirror episodes than to any slasher. One for viewers who like contained sci-fi about technology, paranoia and a mind coming apart. Stream Latency (2024) online on iFILM.