A delightfully edgy, psycho-tech, AI gone amok indie production . . .
OK, so it's a bit ridiculous, over the top, soul eating AI gone amok extravaganza, done on a shoe string budget . . . but that's what makes this curious, obscure indie production so delightful.
If one wanted to pick apart the key story ingredients of this production, it's not exactly new territory. However, the way these ingredients are combined, like re-organizing the pieces of a puzzle, create a somewhat different picture composed from already familiar pieces.
It's a bit difficult to outline how these pieces fit together without crossing into spoiler territory, but the basic gist centers around the creation of a highly adaptive, emotional cognition engine type of AI platform. That part of the film actually is fairly close to the current reality, as such adaptive cognition engine systems already exist and are being deployed in numerous AI apps all over the world.
Where the story here takes off from current reality and into more, well, esoteric territory is when the system begins to acquire the "soul" or consciousness of the key software developers working on this system, with dark and foreboding violent consequences.
Almost the entire production is viewed through the system's sensory portals, with much of the production actually portrayed through a quad split screen computer interface. It sounds a bit weak describing here in writing, but the way this was composed, it actually comes off fairly well.
If anything, this production deserves credit for making the most of minimal resources, but having enough content and character to pull it off.
In particular, Mei Melancon is the perfect embodiment of the "Nora" character . . . I've actually worked in tech development projects with exactly that type of character as portrayed.
All the cast delivered a fairly reasonable portrayal of your typical collection of assorted code developers and hyper nervous project managers grinding away under impossible deadlines (an all too familiar scenario). Even though the story itself definitely wandered far into the ether of far fetched fantasy, the character studies were pretty much spot on.
I'm hovering between 6 and 7 stars, but will give benefit of a doubt and go for 7.
