The Sick Side of AI

Mountainhead is a brutal wake-up call for marketers drunk on data.

Jesse Armstrong’s Mountainhead isn’t just a satire about the tech elite – it’s a scalpel to the throat of modern marketing.

Set in an off-grid bunker where five billionaire founders gather to assess the global mess their AIs have unleashed, the film is dark, surreal, and disturbingly on-brand.

From the jump, it’s clear: this isn’t science fiction. It’s your next brand deck – on ketamine.

Steve Carell’s Randall Garrett, a dying investor seeking digital immortality, spits marketing poison with philosophical normalisations.

“This is toxic, not terminal.”

But the real monster here is Venis (Cory Michael Smith), a dead-eyed fusion of Zuckerberg and Musk. He’s created an AI that persuades through personality – basically, a weaponized brand bot. His outlook?

“Nothing means anything. And everything’s funny and cool.”

That’s half the marketing industry’s strategy today – if it’s trending, it’s truth.

As chaos reigns, Ramy Youssef’s Jeff—the lone voice of caution—warns that Venis’ platform has become a digital cancer. The response?

This isn’t product-market fit. This is destruction as a service.

The film doubles as a satire of startup speak and campaign culture.

It’s tragically funny. Every character is a brand, and every brand is broken.

These men aren’t gods of innovation—they’re pitch addicts, wired on metrics, feeding AIs that no longer ask permission.

For marketers, Mountainhead should feel painfully familiar.

It’s about vanity dressed up as vision, and systems that mistake “going viral” for “adding value.”

Armstrong isn’t warning us about a dystopia to come—he’s documenting the one we’re already marketing.

If brand is the new religion, then Mountainhead is its Book of Revelations.

The movie will make your weekend viewing. But beware the mountain of cuss words. Watch it on HBO Max, or your preferred VPN App. Trailer here