A group of billionaire tech bros gather at a luxurious mountain retreat to bicker over the global economic apocalypse—that they are largely responsible for—in Mountainhead, a semi-sharp satire on distressingly current affairs now streaming on HBO Max. This feature directorial debut from Succession co-creator Jesse Armstrong boasts the same kind of car-crash-fascinating personalities, portrayed through a quartet of strong performances, but the film gets increasingly irritating and loses its bite the longer we spend time with them.
Mountainhead stars Cory Michael Smith as Venis “Ven” Parish, a kind of Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg tech mogul who has just unleashed a dodgy new AI software on his fictional social media platform Traam; within hours, AI-created deepfake disinformation is being spread over the platform to incite violence that erupts into global upheaval, with the company unable to put a stop to it.
Ramy Youssef is Jeff Abredazi, a young Sam Altman-like figure and owner of a company specializing in a competing AI model—one that would be able to identify and eliminate the kind of misinformation being spread on Ven’s social media. And Steve Carrell is Randall Garrett, the old hat investor among the young hotshots and mentor to both Jeff and Ven. The film’s version of, perhaps, Peter Thiel, he’s also dying of cancer, and looking for meaning in a life defined by obscene wealth—nah, scratch that, he’s just desperately after the singularity event that would allow him to live forever.
Each of these characters gathers for a boy’s weekend at the titular Mountainhead, a luxurious Utah mansion that has its own private ski resort, recently purchased by Hugo “Souper” Van Yalk, played by Jason Schwartzman. Souper is the only non-billionaire in the group, with a net worth somewhere in the range of a measly $500 million—a measly sum that makes him their put-upon whipping boy.
Ostensibly an annual gathering to drink, take drugs, play poker, eat canapés, and whatever else these elite tech bro types get up to (there is mention of far more obscene activities), each of the participants has an ulterior motive: Ven needs Jeff to sell him his company, so Traam can immediately put an end to its own inferior rogue AI; Randall needs the same, as the merger of the two companies would speed up a possible AI singularity; Souper is out for investment in his lifestyle meditation app; and pity poor Jeff—he just wants some genuine friends.
As the four bicker with each other, they doomscroll through their smartphones and passively react to the global apocalypse they’ve created: governments are toppled around the world as millions die in violent clashes fed by AI disinformation. The human toll is of little concern to them, of course, as they strategize how best to use the meltdown as an opportunity to further their own concerns.
Mountainhead (a wink-wink reference to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead), is a startlingly timely film: it feels like everything being discussed here, from AI to deepfakes to fake news and big tech’s relationship with world governments, is a matter of immediate and pressing real-world concern. But unlike movies that might actually address these issues and offer some glimmer of hope, we’re trapped with the assholes responsible for these problems, and who revel in them. It’s like a version of Don’t Look Up seen only from the point of view of Mark Rylance‘s tech mogul and Meryl Streep‘s president; here, it’s only the audience who is begging for these people to look at the elephant in the room.
The first half of Mountainhead is urgent and engaging stuff, as the four bozos pal around and casually take note of the global collapse; we hate these people, but can’t take our eyes off them. It helps that these detestable characters are played with utter conviction by the cast: Carrell is unusually menacing as Randall, Schwartzman is perfectly-cast as the pitiful Souper, Youssef is almost-sympathetic as the closest thing the movie has to a conscience, and Smith, who played Chevy Chase in last year’s Saturday Night, is the opposite of that in a revelatory turn as Ven, the walking embodiment of a soulless, artificial being.
But Mountainhead becomes more and more farcical as it goes along, and a climax featuring multiple bungled murder attempts begins to resemble The Ladykillers (the Coen Bros. version, natch) more than the sharp satire of the film’s earlier scenes. And as the film loses its bite, these characters become less and less interesting, and we may regret spending too much time with them.
Despite its timely themes and biting early satire, Mountainhead ultimately can’t sustain its high-altitude tension for the duration. The performances are committed, and Armstrong’s instincts are mostly strong ,but the film’s sharpest observations about tech-world hubris get buried beneath the farce. It’s a cautionary tale about digital overlords that starts with a bang—and ends in a buffering wheel.
