THE REMOTES Trailer Teases a Haunting Filipino Sci-Fi Neo-Noir Mystery

The first trailer has arrived for The Remotes, a Filipino sci-fi mystery thriller that mixes neo-noir, surveillance technology, grief, and political anxiety into one strange and haunting trip through Manila.

Written and directed by John Torres, the film follows a grieving detective investigating two sisters connected to a sinister navigation app. The deeper he gets into the case, the more he begins giving himself over to the unseen voices controlling the city, while struggling with the loss he still hasn’t escaped.

The film stars Alchris Galura, Gabby Padilla, Julia Richards, and Enchong Dee, and it looks like a fascinating piece of experimental sci-fi for viewers who enjoy slow cinema and art house genre films that aren’t interested in giving you easy answers.

Torres describes the ideas driving the film: "The Remotes is about how longing can become infrastructure. How grief stifles us while technology listens in & automates our choices in life. It is a world where people willingly surrender to it because it brings them closer to someone they lost, or someone they used to be."

That gives you a pretty good idea of the melancholy territory The Remotes is exploring. Technology here offers people something emotionally irresistible, using their grief and desire for connection to pull them further under its control.

The film also draws from the political history of the Philippines, particularly former president Rodrigo Duterte’s "war on drugs" and the surveillance state that developed around it. That real-world foundation gives its sci-fi premise an unsettling edge.

The New York Film Festival offered this description of the film: "Manila-based filmmaker, musician, artist John Torres has constructed an original, visually striking form of neo-noir that combines sci-fi & documentary into a new stylistic blueprint.

“Following a cop in mourning one year after his wife was killed in a mysterious driver-app-related auto accident, and his telepathic sister-in-law, whose recorded voice might hold a clue to the case, The Remotes is a thought-provoking inquiry into the larger forces—political, technological—that conspire to control our bodies and identities.

“Fashioned in part as a response to the Philippines' longtime president Rodrigo Duterte's 'war on drugs' & the country's resultant surveillance state, this drifting, impressionistic film expands & compresses time, allowing its sinister, tragic narrative to gradually emerge in its moody, fog-enshrouded cityscape."

Torres is a Manila-based Filipino filmmaker whose previous features include Todo todo teros, Taon noong ako'y anak sa labas, Ang ninanais, Lukas the Strange, and People Power Bombshell: The Diary of Vietnam Rose, along with numerous short films.

Torres co-wrote The Remotes with Dodo Dayao, with Sherad Sanchez, Shireen Seno, and Torres producing. The movie premiered on the 2026 festival circuit, playing at the Toronto International Film Festival and New York Film Festival this fall. There’s currently no release date set.