A canceled influencer hides from the internet in rural Wisconsin, and the stranger who finds her there is played by Maria Bakalova. Get Off Your Phone has wrapped, with Chelsea Frei directing, writing and starring.
Frei plays Daniela, who retreats to Wisconsin with her boyfriend Jackson to disconnect from the digital world. Jon Rudnitsky plays Jackson. Bakalova plays Rada, the stranger whose arrival turns the detox unsettling. Deadline reported the casting on Monday.
Frei traces the script to her own screen time. “I started writing Get Off Your Phone during the pandemic, when my screen time had reached truly alarming levels,” she said, and she wanted to “take that obsession to the extreme.” The producers bill the film as social satire crossed with psychological horror and dark comedy.
Bakalova’s Other Horror Comedy Was ‘Bodies Bodies Bodies’
Bakalova played Bee in Bodies Bodies Bodies, the 2022 A24 comedy in which a group of rich twentysomethings play a party game during a hurricane and begin turning up dead. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and played Ivana Trump in The Apprentice.
Three Companies and Six Producers
Phiphen Pictures, Framehound and Doom and Gloom produced, with Molly Conners, Amanda Bowers, Andi Matichak, Emma Thorne, Gillian Williams and Frei credited as producers. Principal photography has finished. No distributor is attached.
Frei appears on The Paper, and Get Off Your Phone is her feature directorial debut. Screen-life horror normally locks its characters inside the device. This one begins with a woman trying to leave it behind, and a stranger arriving anyway.