Even Realities Asks: What If Smart Glasses Exposed Your Private Life to the World?

Ishana Night Shyamalan lensed the unsettling microdrama

During a posh hotel holiday, you decide to take in a movie. But recent scenes from your life—moments you assumed were private—flash across the screen as the crowd bursts into laughter. Maybe next time try a staycation instead?

There’s no escape and a creepy twist at the end of such a scenario for the family in this 10-episode microseries. It positions Even’s smart glasses, made without cameras, as alternatives to potentially invasive devices from Meta and other tech firms.

The vibe from Vice Media’s Virtue Worldwide and director Ishana Night Shyamalan feels claustrophobic and cautionary. It scores because the world-building seems so plausible. This scenario could play out in a couple of years. Or a few months hence. Or maybe next week, the way things are heading.

This 5-minute cut that tells the whole story:

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And if scary shite’s going down, leave the freaky doll behind:

“We wanted the viewer to feel the dread camera glasses bring by creating an atmosphere that’s dripping with suspense, paranoia and hyper-surveillance,” Virtue creative director Katherine Fernandez tells Muse. “We also love how Black Mirror does this amazing job of leaping into the near future to tell a cautionary tale with tremendous style, so that really inspired us.”

She cites The Shining, Psycho and Francis Ford Coppola’s cult-classic The Conversation (an early exploration of constant scrutiny) as other points of reference.

Believing that “a lot of the vertical series out there are AI slop, comedies or rom-coms,” the team strove to “make a cinematic director’s-style work for the short attention spans of social media,” she says.

“True suspense needs time to build. But social media best practices call for quick action. A lot of creative editing came to play so that we could grab the viewers’ attention without sacrificing craft.”

Teased last month in advance of its broader Oct. 8 launch, “Exposed” has tallied several million views across all platforms. That’s likely in equal parts a testament to its watchability and the suspicious tenor times we live in.

Fernandez’s advice for other seeking to tackle such narratives across social media? “Stop making ads people want to skip. Start making stories they want to share.”

Shyamalan discusses the project in the BTS clip below.

“It becomes dangerous when it’s not talked about, when tech companies are running in the background and making decisions that change the landscape of our world,” she says.

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Related: Data Trackers Are Too Darn Clingy in Apple’s Privacy Spot