Director: Kate Dolan
Stars: Claudia Doumit, David Rysdahl, Lily Sullivan
Like unbranded space, places both public and private that are 100% free of AI are already starting to feel scarce as the haphazard tech is ceaselessly thrust upon us like a crushing inevitability. I fucking hate it. My 9-to-5 workplace is a constant barrage. If it’s not tiresome prompts at the opening of any given software program it’s the braindead emails from management that smack of Co-Pilot. It’s hard not to feel submerged. Of course the movies – one of our primary creative outlets – are confronting and talking about it. But sometimes the mirror is as exhausting as the reality.
SOULM8TE – purportedly an extension of the M3GAN universe but featuring virtually no material connection – has been the unfortunate victim of that burgeoning series’ recent stumble. When M3GAN 2.0 failed to generate the same kind of box office as it’s zeitgeisty forbearer, on came the brakes and this movie was pulled from cinematic release back in January. Now, 7 months later, it washes up anonymously as a streaming option, but the damage has been done. In the intervening time, a little flick called Obsession happened. And while not an AI sex-robot horror movie, Curry Barker’s global smash now has the drop on many of SOULM8TE‘s themes and ideas. Kate Dolan’s movie has wound up feeling like it’s riding the coattails of a movie it technically should have preceded.
But let’s not pretend SOULM8TE would have been anything close to original had it come out in January. Hell, it doesn’t even deviate from the basic structure of M3GAN. We’re in pure Stepford Wives territory here and, as intimated, cautionary tales of renegade AIs aren’t exactly in short supply at the moment. Hell, in the last 18 months we’ve had the notable likes of Companion and Subservience, not to mention TUBI trash like the MaidDroid movies. Robot Girlfriend From Hell movies are falling over each other like prototypes reverting to factory settings.
Meet David (David Rysdahl), nice-but-nerdy employee of Kanta Robotics whose company is being swallowed up by tech giant Ultima. David doesn’t socialise much since losing his wife Lizzie to cancer, much as his colleague Aubrey (Claudia Doumit) wishes he would. Ultima’s premiere corporate sleaze Ben (Arty Froushan) sees an opportunity to manipulate David into beta-testing the company’s new line of android girlfriends; the next logical step from their already successful romantic chatbots. The company line is that this will help combat an epidemic of chronic isolationism. The reality, clearly, is a slave race of sexbot maids who won’t challenge their male cis-het masters. Contending with one of his own fits of loneliness, David opts in and Sara (Lily Sullivan) is duly delivered. But, being a dab hand at the backend code, David quickly starts making his own tweaks to enliven his fake girlfriend’s ‘personality’. Chaos ensues.
Try as he might to humanise the technology, Sara responds with predictably aggressive neediness. While able to bend and break all of her safeguarding protocols, her fundamental purpose to ‘love’ David seems unshakable; a root problem even she cannot fix. When things get unpleasant, David can only apologise. He does nothing to effectively remedy the situation. Even if his intentions are considered honourable, he is still trying to bypass the effort and complexity of a genuine human connection by designing and thereby deciding his new partner’s personality. When he and Aubrey start connecting, she becomes a clear threat to Sara and the path to the end of the movie is clear. It’s glaringly obvious that SOULM8TE is following the exact same trajectory and plot points as M3GAN, (right down to the sequence of victims) making the remainder disappointingly predictable. David may have removed Sara’s inhibitors, but the movie is inhibited by the strictures of convention.
Which prompts the question, why make this deviation at all? Just to dabble in the shallow waters of spicer, raunchier adult content and bloodier deaths? In it’s favour – and unlike Obsession – the graphic violence wrought here isn’t restricted by gender. The men get their comeuppance, for the most part, and exposing the skeezy rise of misogyny among socially inadequate or insecure males leads to a couple of readily enjoyable and ridiculous deaths, as Sara snares and maims her dimwitted prey. While it’s hard to feel sympathetic for these chodes who salivate over Soulm8tes, siding with the AI is basically impossible. Sara remains, to the end, dehumanised (her face gradually disfigured and removed, ala M3GAN).
SOULM8TE at least has a sassy, self-awareness about it (Elijah Isaiah Cook seems like a future star and is criminally underused in this regard). It is never more fun than when leaning into the lineage of the tawdry ’90s erotic thriller. The cold open is like some sci-fi Basic Instinct skit, and once Sara adorns herself in an outfit with aggressive shoulder pads, her spurned lover routine is knowingly coded toward Fatal Attraction and it’s ilk. Shannons Tweed and Whirry would likely approve.
But the over-familiarity of this story remains. It feels like a variant, not a new prototype. Glossy, jankily edited, and as uncannily hollow as it’s antagonist. Even the weaponised song choices feel less impactful than in M3GAN (a karaoke version of ‘Lovefool’ sends up a shower of uncomfortable red flags but, honestly, what’s gonna beat a little girl robot trilling ‘Titanium’?). The movie’s funniest metatextual barb may even be unintentional as, at the end of the credit crawl, a disclaimer advises that SOULM8TE “may not be used to train AI”.
No kidding.
The Lost Highway Hotel 