When Decibel writer-producers Stephen Christensen and Matt Wise started work on the film — about a young musician forced to compose songs with intrusive help from A.I. — it felt like pure sci-fi. But as director Zac Locke explained at a FilmQuest screening, it now feels pretty realistic.

Locke remembers that his first reaction to reading the script, around January 2020, was “what is all this? Could this happen? It was in the future.” But with all that’s changed in the intervening years, including rapid changes in artificial intelligence, the film is now set very much in the present.

Decibel follows talented but struggling singer-songwriter Scout (Aleyse Shannon), who is invited to work with a groundbreaking, hitmaking producer named Donna (Stefanie Estes) whose interests in music and medical technology overlap. Scout is invited to a state-of-the-art studio in the desert, where she hits it off with engineer Griff (Colby Groves.) But things take a turn.

When you hear “musical horror,” you may think camp — in the vein of Phantom the Paradise or The Rocky Horror Picture Show. But Decibel keeps everything very grounded.

The music — largely created by Shannon and Groves — tells us about their characters’ desires and motivations without breaking the fourth wall. There’s a meticulous build to the moment Scout realizes what she’s gotten herself into, followed by pulsing, infectious crescendo. It sometimes feels hypnotic.

The environs feel authentic because they are. The film, which takes place at an isolated home in the desert, was shot at a real 150-acre property in Yucca Valley, California. And when the producers couldn’t find the sleek studio they imagined, they had one built, in Fresno.

The authenticity makes the film’s observations about how A.I. can accelerate the creative process — while sapping it of real soul — feel more true.

“As a filmmaker, for me, movies have to be about something else and something bigger,” Locke said Saturday at the post-screening Q&A. “It’s about art versus commerce. And at a level up from that, it’s about how, even if you’re not an artist — which everybody is — but even if art isn’t your thing, it’s about staying true to yourself in the face of being forced to conform with society.”

FilmQuest, one of MovieMaker‘s 25 Coolest Film Festivals in the World, is very much a festival for and by creators. Many people in the audience for Saturday’s Decibel screening were filmmakers themselves.

“We talked about A.I. a little bit on set and in pre-production and post-production. But really we talked about those kind of bigger issues that I think all of us, probably, in this room, feel to a certain extent every day,” Locke told the FilmQuest audience. “And if you don’t, you’re lucky.”

Main image: Aleyse Shannon in Decibel.