Unsichtbarer Angreifer (2023)

Emma Turgut works as a private behavioral therapist in Berlin. Ever since she responded too late to her patient Larissa Sobolew’s calls for help and found her dead in the bathtub with her wrists cut, Emma has suffered from guilt and flashbacks. One of her coping strategies is developing a therapy app, with which she hopes to treat a large number of patients at the same time. The app is being programmed by the AI company Samira Lab, where Emma’s husband Amir works as a marketing strategist. The company belongs to Georg, Amir’s best friend. The couple live in a house in Berlin’s green belt, opulently equipped with smart technology from Samira Lab. One day, a new potential patient, Amanda Lund, presses Emma to see her. Plagued by anxiety, Amanda can barely leave her apartment. She has researched Emma, however, and also knows that Emma is developing a therapy app, which she has high hopes for. Because Amanda reminds Emma of Larissa in many ways, Emma promises to treat her in the future, even though she is completely overworked. But the app is ready sooner than expected, so Amanda’s remote treatment begins right away. At first, everything seems to be going well with the app. Emma familiarizes her patients with its features, including relaxation exercises, homework, and a chat function. Patients now only have in-person appointments every three weeks. But increasingly strange things begin happening with the electronics. For example, the house robot secretly films Emma in the shower and tumbles down the stairs after being switched to manual rather than automatic control, without the residents doing anything. The smart coffee machine orders more coffee as planned, but in an unplanned quantity: 30 kilograms. One night, when Emma can’t sleep after nightmares about Larissa, she tries to relax in the sauna, but its temperature “automatically” rises from 40°C to 95°C, and she suffers a circulatory collapse. Emma’s son Malik befriends Challuke (= Challenge Lukas), an influencer who takes on the most hair-raising challenges for clicks and his community’s admiration, livestreaming them. Challuke helps Malik set up his own social media channel and suddenly becomes a constant guest at the house. Emma finds the young man very unsettling and suspects him of causing the electronic assistants’ malfunctions. Driven by an obsession with saving all her patients, and especially the emotionally fragile Amanda Lund, in order to magically make amends for her earlier mistake, Emma becomes irritable and withdrawn and loses sight of her family. Amir is dissatisfied with both their relationship and his job, and tries several times to talk to Emma about it, but she either doesn’t listen or is distracted by calls from patients through the app. Eventually Amir takes a sabbatical, which Emma learns about through social media. She is angry because she feels betrayed by Amir, and after an argument he temporarily moves into a hotel. Shortly afterward, Malik also moves out because Emma forbids him from seeing Challuke. The next day, the app automatically moves Amanda’s video appointment forward to an earlier slot that has become available, without asking Emma for confirmation. Emma nevertheless goes into the session somewhat unprepared. Amanda wants to confide a big secret in her. But the conversation is heavily disrupted by requests from an app belonging to the Plura parcel delivery service, which suggests that Emma open the front door via the app so the delivery person can leave a package inside the house rather than with the neighbors. The app’s function seems to be malfunctioning, however: it restarts several times, and Emma can no longer make out what Amanda is saying. Instead, Emma watches on the home camera as a stranger, rather than the delivery person, rushes into the house. Panicking, she puts off the confused Amanda, who thinks the therapist can’t handle her confession, and drives home to look for the intruder. But she finds no one, and the police officers she calls can only give her the laconic advice not to open any more doors when she isn’t home. That same evening, an alarm goes off; all the lights go out, and red warning lights flash everywhere. Emma can’t turn the lights back on because the smart-home system claims she doesn’t have access. Armed with a flashlight and a kitchen knife, Emma searches the house but can’t find anything. The system suddenly allows her access again, and the strange incident seems to be over—only the house robot is still malfunctioning. To distract herself, Emma scrolls through various social media platforms and discovers on Challuke’s channel that he appears to be filming her house right now—and from inside! She manages to overpower Challuke from a hiding place and locks him in the sauna so he will tell her what he wants from her and why he hacked into her smart-home system. Challuke swears he hasn’t hacked into anything, but gives Emma the idea that she may have picked up malware through a download or an update. Emma goes to see Georg to get his opinion as an IT expert; besides, he is the only person still willing to talk to her. Georg advises her to switch off the house’s wireless network overnight, until he can troubleshoot the next day, and begins to kiss her. At first Emma seems pleasantly surprised, but she quickly ends the moment, pointing out that she is still married to Georg’s best friend, and drives home. Amir is already waiting for her there, because after seeing a recent post by Georg, he assumes Emma must be having an affair with him. Instead of clearing things up, the two trade accusations, and Amir leaves the house disappointed. The next morning, Georg reports that an employee named Celine had caught a virus on her computer; that must have been the cause of the problems. He says he fired Celine as a result. Emma turns her phone back on and receives messages about countless attempted calls from her patients—all of whom had been advised to find another therapist. In an attempt to limit the damage, Emma calls Amanda, who is utterly distraught by this suggestion. Since Amanda can’t come to the practice because of her agoraphobia, she says she will go to Emma’s house, as she lives in the neighborhood, and wait there for her. Emma drives to Samira Lab and happens to run into Celine, who tells her that she never had a virus on her computer. Instead, she had discovered that Georg had built a back door into Emma’s app, giving him control over the home electronics. Confronted, Georg admits that he has been in love with Emma for a long time and wants to be with her; the technical problems he caused were meant to keep bringing Emma back to him as her consultant. Suddenly Amanda calls again. She is now standing outside Emma’s house and says she can’t be alone. Emma lets her into the house and promises to get to her as soon as possible and to stay in touch with her through the app’s chat function, but the connection drops in a long road tunnel. Emma becomes consumed by the image of finding the desperate Amanda at home in the bathtub with her wrists cut, just as she had found Larissa, but the house is empty. Amir comes by and tries to comfort the sobbing Emma. They discover that the app’s artificial intelligence has warned the patients about Emma because her heart rate and blood pressure readings have often been too high lately due to stress—the health insurance company had already assigned her penalty points for the same reason. Then Emma remembers that ever since childhood Amanda has felt most comfortable in caves (which she built herself back then), and suspects that this is why she is in the sauna—which is indeed where she is. Emma, relieved, embraces Amanda; the film ends with this rescue of the patient, albeit a provisional one.