One from the Archives

Archive (2020) is another library borrow, but it has been on our Netflix queue for a while. I was looking for some elevated horror for Ms. Spenser, and I knew this wasn't quite that. But we went ahead anyway. 

It stars Theo James, who is getting a remote AI/robotics facility up and running. The security, in particular, is having trouble. He is alone in the facility, except for two robots - one big, clunky and dumb, the other smaller, still pretty clunky and smarter, but still a work in progress. His boss, Rhona Mitra, makes a few Zoom calls to make sure he's going to have a robot prototype ready on time. But he actually seems to be working on a secret personal project.

Through flashbacks, we meet his wife, Stacy Martin, and see a horrible car crash. Over the course of the film, we find out that he has been chosen to go to a Japanese secret facility (presumably the one he's now at) and that she may be pregnant, and may plan to have the baby. We know she is dead, because he talks to her "archive" over the phone. In the future, they have a way to record a personality and allow you to interact with it for a limited time. Toby Jones and Richard Glover come to the facility because they are afraid James has tampered with the Archive machine. He gets rid of them.

His big project turns out to be a humanoid robot, with a face but no arms or legs. He sets her up with arms, but uses the legs from his smarter, previous generation robot. The robot doesn't like this - she feels that she is being superseded by the newer model. It's clear that he has been running his dead wife's archive on these robots. 

And that's the set up. I thought this would be more like Replicas with Keanu Reeves, and it sort of is - even a scene where an AI is "woken up" and it goes mad and starts screaming. But it also isn't. For one thing, it isn't very plotty. It spends a lot of time looking at the facility - a high-tech bunker on a cliff next to a gorgeous waterfall, with a retractable bridge. It is surrounded by a snowy forest, and yes, we get drone shots of it all. The angle of the almost good-enough robot is interesting and sad, and even has consequences, but I'm not sure how well integrated it is. And there's a final twist that is cute, but undermines a lot of the logic. 

Well, it looked good. It wasn't horror really, or even much of a thriller, but was kind of interesting in a well-done, indie way.