I saw this at a showing in Austin last night. They did a live Q&A with Franklin Rich (Lead / Writer / Director). I went in to this with no real expectations. I needed to fill a Black Mirror sized hole in my heart and this did the trick.
The movie is shot in three parts. The first part was shot in 2020 with an extremely limited budget, local acting talent to FL, and then shopped around to complete the film. Given all the hubbub about AI in recent months he picked a good time to create this and release now.
The movie is entirely dialogue driven but absolutely flew by. They started in the present day with the origin story of the AI and then jump 15 / 50 years for two and three. It passed one of my tests by completely suspending my disbelief being immersed in the story. I am sure it could be picked apart from the technical side or that the acting wasn't superb but it didn't matter. The representation of AI was solid and there were no holes in how they presented things that were jarring enough to snap me out of it.
While the premise is the hunting of online predators, this is just the back drop. There is no detail or examples. This caused my wife to enjoy the movie much more than otherwise. She, as with most folks I imagine, gets terribly uncomfortable with the topic especially if anything is depicted. There is some flashback / character history that is touched on but it is kept vague and left to the imagination.
The Q&A afterwards was really great other than a few tech bros just looking for a reason to say 'they work in the industry' and thought he did a good job. Rich's nervous energy was sweet. This is his first feature length film and he really enjoyed making and talking about it. He was heavily influenced by Metropolis and there are several references. He even stayed after the Q&A to hang out in the hall / lobby to chat with folks that were interested.
All in all, I would recommend checking this out. Great watch.
