Babak Anvari returned to Sundance this year following the premiere of his first feature film back in 2016, Under the Shadow. His new movie is Wounds, which stars Armie Hammer as a bartender who picks up a phone left behind by some underage drinkers. When he discovers some disturbing photos on the phone, he learns that the kids have actually performed a ritual and opened a portal, which they’ve now passed on to him through the phone.

Based on the novel by Nathan Ballingrud, Anvari sees those millennial kids as the real terror of the film.

“The kids become the puppet masters, these millennials, these evil millennials who sort of played with fire and started something that probably they don’t even understand,” Anvari said. “And it affects him.”

Anvari considers himself a millennial himself, to be clear.

“I’m a millennial,” Anvari said. “I’m right at the start of it and I do think, unfortunately, a lot of the stuff that’s happening today is because of that lack of responsibility of millennials. Even recently you saw millennials can be really callous and heartless, especially the internet generation. They hide behind technology.”

One of those specific recent events Anvari is referring to made headlines a couple weeks back, when Covington high schoolers mocked a Native American protester. In other words, it wasn’t a stretch for Anvari to envision millennials sending demonic violence after an innocent grown-up.

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“Yeah, how the Native American got abused by those kids, they can be very heartless and callous,” Anvari said. “Unfortunately, that’s in the generation and I think that trolling obviously comes from the millennials. They have this ability to hide, like I was trying to do in my film. They’re in the shadows. They’re the puppet masters. They hide behind technology and do whatever the hell they want. They wreak chaos and turn the world upside down whilst invisible.”

To be fair, millennials have inherited a lot of problems from Generation X, including the financial and housing crises, unfeasible debt with lower job prospects and climate change previous regimes failed to address.

“That’s true,” Anvari conceded. “I totally agree but you always inherent something, so you need to be more responsible and be smarter.”

The millennial obsession with cellphones and technology may seem like a predominantly American thing, but Anvari notes it is worldwide, and he is just as addicted as the rest of us.

“100% it’s international, everywhere in the world,” Anvari told us. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m constantly on my phone as well. I usually try to make films and analyze my own dilemmas and my own flaws. That’s definitely one of my flaws. I’m a slave to technology as much as anyone else.”

Annapurna will release Wounds later this year.