Two sci-fi icons team up in a thriller you can see early and for free

Director Timur Bekmambetov has had a fascinating career, first as a spectacle director in Russia then as the eye behind conventional Hollywood blockbusters like Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. But along the way, Bekmambetov emerged as a pioneer for the “screenlife” format — a found-footage variant in which stories were told across iPhones, tablets, and other everyday devices. Hits like Unfriended and Searching paved the way for the subgenre, which has become such a part of Bekmambetov’s identity that he’s penned books on screenlife as a film philosophy.