Phreaker (2026)
Directed & Written by Adam Yorke
Starring Cole Asher Phillips, Robb Wells, Enrico Colantoni, Rick Hoffman, & Giorgia Whigham.
Thriller
★★★★1/2 (out of ★★★★★)
Adam Yorke’s Phreaker tells a story inspired by real life that follows Jake (Cole Asher Phillips), a lonely blind teen who mostly gets bullied at school and even at home. Jake finds solace in calling random phone numbers to search for people with whom he can make a connection, in lieu of ‘real-life’ connections. One day he winds up on a party line and it alters the course of his life. He talks to a man called Ray (Enrico Colantoni) who enlightens him about “phreakers” and how they use phones to hack the system. Jake soon becomes a genius hacker, then eventually flies too close to the sun when the FBI gets involved.
Phreaker is entertaining as a period piece capturing the early-to-mid-2000s before the internet fully took hold of everything, prior to social media’s emergence. It’s also a tragic tale about how people can become so alienated that they gravitate towards unhealthy coping mechanisms. Jake’s trajectory from unknown to party-line phreaker legend is a compelling look at how even a little power can corrupt good people. Phreaker is at once a tech-thriller and simultaneously a cautionary tale about how anonymity, whether over the phone or online, can transform us into monsters.
At its heart, Phreaker is a story about the depths of loneliness and how the telephone has long offered a form of connection to those without immediate connection in their lives. Through the phone, Jake is able to make friends. It doesn’t take long before he sees the potential beyond that and gets obsessed. Soon the phone and its potentials become forms of power for Jake to wield. He really only ever hurts people, even if they’re not all the greatest people. He takes advantage of trust in order to get what he wants. In a disturbed scene, Jake makes a rival suck on the receiver of a payphone booth in order to receive mercy. He engages in swatting those who cross him, even in the slightest, a while before it would reach mainstream attention in the 2010s. And he gets addicted to the power of anonymity above all else. It’s only when his anonymity is shattered does he start to realise the consequences of what he’s doing. The internet rears its head more and more throughout the film but Phreaker plays out in a time before social media became what we know today and before smartphones entered into existence to completely alter the social sphere itself. At one point when Jake says he’s addicted to the phone, Dave Spokes (Robb Wells) chuckles, saying: “Addicted? To your phone? Now that’s the dumbest shit I’ve ever heard.” A fantastic line that also feels like a stab in the gut in 2026. If only Dave could’ve seen the future.
Fear of the system exists even for those who are able to hack it, as Ray explains to Jake that “when you fuck with the system, eventually the system will fuck you back.” It’s not enough to hack the system, the system needs to be dismantled for any of us to ultimately be free. The worst aspect of Phreaker looks at how Jake doesn’t do anything except use the power he gains to enrich his life, rather than finding some kind of productive outlet through which to use it. Ray tells him: “You learned all the right things for all the wrong reasons.” He doesn’t do it to liberate others or to alter, or maybe destroy, the current systems holding everybody back. Jake’s the same as all the real-life hackers out there who choose to use their talents for financial gain rather than, y’know, wiping out everybody’s student loans or credit card debt. In his pursuit for some kind of enjoyable gratification in his life, Jake abuses power just like everybody else, from his older brother to the bullies at school to the phone companies overcharging all of us. Phreaker can really be seen as a portrait of misspent power since Jake winds up more isolated than ever by the end of the film.
