For InRO's ND/NF coverage back in April:

Ricky D’Ambrose‘s Notes on an Appearance is one of the most idiosyncratic feature debuts at this year’s NDNF. As with Ambrose’s NDNF-programmed short film Spiral Jetty, the scenario here is rife with genre appeal: A young man from a moneyed background disappears shortly after returning to New York City. D’Ambrose, though — working in the micro-budget range — resists expectation with his distinctive archival sense and his attention to detail. Notes progresses largely…

It could be that Stephen Susco is just some previously-undistinguished virtuoso, here aided by a team of tech wizards. More likely, it's that the text (i.e. the "dark web" of the Internet) is so generative—and the corresponding tools so under-explored in cinema—that the result is just riveting. The opening hacking is its own self-contained joke, not just sleek exposition, but also a rapid-fire time capsule of, e.g. "covfefe" and even the current notion of a password. And even without the…