Adam Cassidy is a low-level inventor who works for a corporation run by Nicholas Wyatt. After being fired for insubordination, Adam uses the company's credit card to pay for bottle service for his friends at a club. Wyatt and his enforcer, Miles Meechum, blackmail Adam into becoming a corporate spy for Wyatt by threatening to have him arrested for fraud. Adam is trained by Judith Bolton and infiltrates a company run by Wyatt's former mentor, Jock Goddard. He provides Goddard, who stole several of Wyatt's ideas, with an advanced software able to hack into cellphones, with potential military applications. FBI Agent Gamble interrogates Adam, revealing that three other employees of Wyatt who transferred to Goddard's company were found dead, but Adam ignores him. Adam finds out Emma Jennings, a woman he met during the party, is the Director of Marketing of Goddard's company. He initiates a relationship with Emma in order to steal files about Goddard's upcoming projects. Wyatt threatens to kill Adam's father, Frank Cassidy, if Adam doesn't steal a revolutionary prototype cellphone, called Occura developed by Goddard. Adam later finds out Meechum and Bolton are monitoring him, so he destroys the cameras in his apartment. In retaliation, Meechum runs over Adam's friend, Kevin, with a car, almost killing him. Adam is given 48 hours to steal the prototype. Adam uses Emma's thumbprint lifted from a spoon to gain security access to the company's vault. He is confronted there by Goddard, who intends to take over Wyatt's company with evidence that Adam was acting as Wyatt's spy. Emma finds out Adam used her. Adam recruits Kevin to help him. A meeting is set with Wyatt and Goddard, where it is revealed that Bolton has spied against Wyatt on Goddard's behalf. Both men speak of the crimes they have committed to sabotage each other's companies. Adam has secretly used software to transmit their conversation to Kevin, whose computer recordings are turned over to the FBI. Goddard, Wyatt, Bolton and Meechum are arrested by Gamble, while Adam is released for contributing to the FBI's investigation. He opens a small startup company in Brooklyn with Kevin and their friends, and reconciles with Emma, thanking her with a passionate kiss.
released Paranoia August 16, 2013, and it was a box office bomb. The film debuted at #13 in the United States, generating only $3.5 million in its first weekend and going on to gross a total of $7.4 million in the US. It made $8.9 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $16.3 million. Variety magazine listed Paranoia as one of "Hollywood's biggest box office bombs of 2013".
Reception
, a review aggregator, reports that 7% of 105 critics have given Paranoia a positive review; the average rating is 3.8/10. Their consensus is: "Clichéd and unoriginal, Paranoia is a middling techno-thriller with indifferent performances and a shortage of thrills." Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote, "Not since Taylor Lautner has Hollywood ogled a pretty boy this vacant and poorly prepared." Andrew Barker of Variety wrote, "No one seems paranoid enough in this indifferently made, nearly tension-free thriller." Stephen Farber of The Hollywood Reporter called it "slick but muddled".
