Disturbing Cyberbully Takes Charge in Tech Thriller ‘I.T.’

Allyson Gronowitz

In this digital age, internet-savvy technicians hold an extraordinary amount of power in their hands— and as we know from headlines detailing recent hacking scandals and terrifying reports of cyberbullying, this power can easily be exploited. That’s the premise of the modern thriller “I.T.” from director John Moore (“The Omen,” “A Good Day to Die Hard”), which pegs a disturbed and obsessive I.T temp, Ed Porter (James Frecheville), against successful business mogul Mike Regan (Pierce Brosnan) and his family.

Regan’s company is about to launch an app that enables the wealthy to book private jets at the click of a button—in other words, the “Uber for planes.” He has a walk-in closet with an infinite number of sleek suits, drives a fancy car and owns a technologically advanced “smart home.” But aside from these ostentatious accouterments, Regan comes across as a pretty decent guy— he treats his workers well, and clearly loves his wife (Anna Friel) and teenage daughter Kaitlyn (Stefanie Scott).

Plus, he certainly knows how to hold a crowd, as evidenced by the rapt faces watching his video presentation for the upcoming app. The presentation nearly ends in disaster when a glitch temporarily shuts down the video, but the quick thinking of I.T. temp Porter saves the day. Regan awkwardly expresses his gratitude by inviting Porter to come to his home for the weekend to fix his daughter’s WiFi. Porter agrees. It’s a testament to Frecheville’s subtle performance that Porter immediately comes across as somewhat off, even though his actions at first are apparently neutral: he ogles Regan’s impressive house (and daughter) and politely converses with Regan on the nature of privacy. As Frecheville told Entertainment Voice: “I wanted to build a character that was dangerous, but not when you first laid eyes on him.”

Yet we also witness Porter slyly photographing a waitress with his phone, and we see him in his dimly lit, Batcave-like enclosure, surrounded by computer screens and ominous techno music. He begins messaging Kaitlyn Regan, and soon enough, all hell breaks loose. For his part, Frecheville leaned towards analyzing his character from a distance rather than trying to get inside his head. “I didn’t dwell too long on his motivations or why he thought the things he thought,” Frecheville said. “But what fascinates me is how [some people] can process information incorrectly or completely misconstrue a situation.”

When Regan invites him over, Porter spins the situation into an opportunity. “Ed thinks internally that he’s got a legitimate chance of dating Mike’s daughter and becoming a part of the family,” Frecheville said. “And then, helping run the company and taking the company to great heights. He’s totally deluded.”Porter begins attending Kaitlyn’s field hockey games, and shows up, unannounced, at the Regan house. Regan, ever the aloof businessman, fluently and efficiently dismisses him—but that single action unravels what little remains of Porter’s self-control.”I.T.” is meticulously plotted, and over the course of the film, nearly every red flag that crops up is played with terrifying results.

Porter himself is an interesting, disturbing character study. “I didn’t play him as a psychopath, in that psychopaths don’t necessarily have the same spectrum of human emotion that non-psychopaths do,” Frecheville said. “I wanted to make him really sad and pathetic and angry and confused, like someone acting very inappropriately and childishly.”There was, however, an unexpected detail that helped tip the character from unsettling to terrifying: his haircut. “It was the worst haircut,” Frecheville said. “That helped because it made me feel unnatural in the ways that I needed to.”

Frecheville himself has no coding experience, but he’s well-educated when it comes to matters of online privacy. In “I.T.,” Porter uses his skills to take advantage of the Regan’s complacency to hack into their smart home system and spy on them with their own cameras. The film takes an especially grim turn into cyberbullying territory when Porter video tapes Kaitlyn in a compromising position and sends it, instantly, to her entire school.

“I.T” brilliantly showcases how these “smart” devices can be used for incredible harm. Finally, Regan resorts to brute force to solve his problem, shifting the film to more of a noir spy drama than a technological thriller. But even with the “Mr. Robot”-esque destructive hacking, the truly terrifying element of “I.T.” is, at the end of the day, human nature itself.

“I.T.” is released in theaters nationwide on Sept. 23.