San Francisco IndieFest 2025 Coverage
Britney Lost Her Phone review
What if a fully functioning smartphone popped up in 1802?
Festival reviews will not contain spoilers.
Britney Lost Her Phone
Directed by Vito Trabucco
Written by Alexander Volz
Starring Vince Cusimano, Benjamin Kauffman, Jessica Sonneborn, Hilary Momberger-Powers, Craig Stark and Rosie Okumura
Britney Lost Her Phone Review
Sometimes the premise of a movie is enough to pique your interest completely. It doesn’t even need to be a complicated premise. A simple one will do just fine if it gives you that mind expanding moment questioning what the film will do with it. Britney Lost Her Phone has an incredibly simple premise. One that caught my attention and made it the first film I clicked on when the 2025 San Francisco IndieFest virtual content became available. There are plenty of intriguing films that we’ll be talking about for the next couple weeks…but Britney Lost Her Phone had that unique setup that made it irresistible as the first watch.
What if a modern smartphone popped up in the old west?
Well…I had to know immediately. I didn’t want to give in to the stream of thoughts that immediately leapt to my mind. The first of which was to question how much a smartphone could do without an internet connection. The second of which was to wonder how long the charge would last. It turns out that these thoughts were a waste of time. Britney Lost Her Phone doesn’t explore those practical ideas. It allows early 1800’s settlers to utilize all the phone’s capabilities…despite being hundreds of years too early for wireless technology. They also never try to call anyone…which I found kind of funny as that used to be the primary function of the technology. If google is working in 1802…I was curious what would happen if someone clicked a name in the contact list and tried to connect.
It’s a good thing that I didn’t waste much time on my own immediate ideas for a smartphone in the 1800s…it turns out they all bordered on a thought process that got Eric Stoltz fired from Back to the Future. I don’t know how this piece of modern technology ended up in the desert of 1802…and I don’t know why any of it works. Because those are silly questions to ask when you think about it for 2 seconds. It’s not a documentary about a time traveling phone, after all. What would be the point of the premise if no one could unlock it to begin with?
The concept that Britney Lost Her Phone seems most interested in involves bringing unlimited knowledge to people who rarely question things. Turn of two centuries ago people of faith who believe beyond reason that zucchini will grow in the desert and God will show them the way to the promised land. When the voice assistant on the discovered phone they call Britney (the original owner’s name is on the case) teaches them about digging wells and how to view a map…they are life altering events. But how do they sit with the someone who considers Britney a blasphemous tool of the Devil?
We follow a family attempting to make their way through the American desert in the early 1800s. When the family patriarch Abe (Craig Stark) dies via snake bite…and his wife Betty (Hilary Momberger-Powers) refuses to leave his grave site. That leaves their two sons Luke (Vince Cusimano) and Jeb (Benjamin Kauffman) to figure out how to survive in the treacherous terrain. To further complicate matters, Jeb’s wife Maggie (Jessica Sonneborn) is pregnant with a due date fast approaching. Help comes in an unexpected form when Luke stumbles across a smartphone in the hands of a deceased Native American. Suddenly, all of life’s answers are in the palm of his hand. As well as Spotify…and much to Jeb’s delight, pornography.
Britney Lost Her Phone examines how information affects people who are brand new to it in different ways. Maggie stumbles down a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories about vaccines that haven’t even been invented yet. Luke comes to believe that information is more powerful than faith…much to his mother’s chagrin. And Jeb…well…what Jeb does with Britney is to everyone’s chagrin. The movie explores…but doesn’t actively pass judgment. Information is tremendously useful to the family. Luke accurately points out that Britney would have saved their father because they would have known what to do about a rattlesnake bite. God just sat back and let it happen.
The movie shows the downsides too, obviously. Porn addiction and conspiracies aren’t high on the list of positives the information age has brought to us. But Britney Lost Her Phone isn’t preaching about anything here. It shows us how quickly, and deeply, modern technology can integrate itself into our everyday lives. For better and worse.
Scare Value
Britney Lost Her Phone uses its simple premise to examine many sides of modern technology. Sometimes for laughs…sometimes for theological debate…almost always in an interesting way. Information can make things easier…something that seems of great use in an old western desert…as it is to our everyday lives. But you have to keep at least one eye focused on reality…or you can become truly lost.
