Billed as a spun-off third entry in the “M3GAN” franchise, “Soulm8te” is to “Fatal Attraction” as M3GAN’s vehicles were to “Orphan” and “The Bad Seed” — a robotic replay of very familiar genre tropes. Here, a grieving widower working in tech agrees to try out a prototype of the titular “AI companion,” basically a beauteous virtual assistant ready to serve all his household, emotional and horizontal needs. You know where this is headed: Robo-lover will grow possessive towards its “master,” then turn into an Unstoppable Killing Machine.
None of this is remotely credible, or particularly suspenseful. But it is handled with reasonable aplomb by director Kate Dolan and her cast, who do their best to elevate material that can only be raised so far. Universal opted to bypass theatrical release, releasing to digital platforms in the U.S. and several other territories on August 1st. It’s sure to travel the globe as a viable commercial item, though it’s unlikely to stir enthusiasm sufficient to warrant its own sequel.
David (David Rysdahl) has worked from home for the last year, cloistered in mourning for the wife who died after a long illness. But when his smaller company is bought up by Ultima Robotix, everyone gets hauled back into the office, where incoming boss Ben (Arty Froushan) shows off the “newest product” they’ll be primarily working on: Soulm8te, a female android targeting economically privileged sectors of the “loneliness epidemic.” (Which is assumed to be entirely male, and heterosexual — at least no equivalent models are being designed for other demographics, yet.)
Getting pushed out in the merger is old boss Terrence (Elijah Cook), who commiserates at a going-away party that night with Aubrey (Claudia Doumit), the coworker David has a potential romantic frisson with. But Ben has already detected David’s vulnerability, and seems inclined to exploit it. He urges David to download and utilize an app that’s like a personalized, voice-only virtual emotional-support pal. Once hooked on that, it’s a short leap to lending “her” physical form by agreeing to test-drive his very own Soulm8te, whom he dubs Sara (Lily Sullivan).
This runway-ready glamazon cooks, cleans, intuits his feelings and offers every kind of, er, relief. Far from a blank slate, she seems to come with a very full encyclopedia of knowledge and skills. After a few hours watching TV, she’s also absorbed every bad commonplace about gender relations, from neurosis about diet and looks to “Jerry Springer”-type combativeness. We’re meant to think that sped-up media education, plus some programming tweaks David makes himself, explain her subsequent aberrant behavior.
But Sara is never convincing as a machine. Like numerous similar thrillers before it, this one gives her so many petulant, peculiar and scheming characteristics right away, the central conceit that she’s non-human fails. And it does so long before she goes full Glenn Close, jealously imperiling anyone who might come between her and David. The whole sci-fi pretense evaporates once this screenplay sallies into stock “psycho ex-girlfriend” terrain.
Irish writer-director Dolan’s 2021 debut feature “You Are Not My Mother” was an interesting if uneven stab at balancing supernatural horror themes with a serious take on mental illness, played out between three generations of women in a bleak North Dublin housing estate. But this U.S. production (also shot in Ireland, albeit passing as an unspecified American city) does not reach for psychological complexity or nuance. Its screenplay, which Dolan hatched in collaboration with three others, tries to soft-pedal predictable beats that nonetheless end up the only ones getting beaten.
Rysdahl and Doumit do make their generically-written characters seem pleasantly relatable. Sullivan has an impossible role that demands a lot without providing much inner logic to ground the performance. In the end, “Sara” is just another in a long screen line of quipping, grinning homicidal sexpots, complete with a sequence in which she actually shags someone to death. If Sara has been programmed only to love and be needed, why does she go violently berserk? The answer, of course: Because this is that kind of movie.
And for that kind of movie, it’s slickly shot and paced, so that implausibility doesn’t particular hinder the plot’s uncomplicated progress, or the unspectacular but efficient mayhem wreaked. Dolan and her collaborators do a good job smoothing over the presentation of a fairly janky, formulaic concept, to results that are entertaining enough. But all concerned deserve better material to work with, and “Soulm8te” does not raise expectations that the “M3GAN” universe will aim any higher than competent but disposable genre fodder.
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