This was an iTunes rental that I watched on the flight back to Chicago after the NHRA Auto Club Finals on November 16th. This picture interested me because it seemed similar to Ex Machina and I think that's one of the best films I've seen this year. A bit of research shows that Ex Machina was film in 2013 and released in early 2015 (U.S. release was April 2015). Uncanny was released during the January 2015 film festival circuit but didn't seem to do much after that as I hadn't heard of it until I was looking for viewing options a few weeks ago. So it looks like Ex Machina was the 1st indie sci-fi film about AI. Both films involve a new breed of artificial intelligence that its creators want to pass as human and a minimalist cast.
Directed by Matthew Leutwyler and starring Mark Webber, Lucy Griffiths, David Clayton Rogers and Rainn Wilson, the film opens with Joy Andrews (Griffiths) going to an exclusive interview a programming prodigy David Kressen (Mark Webber). Since graduating from MIT at 19 years old, Kressen has been a bit of a recluse working for Simon Castle (Wilson), the billionaire CEO of Kestrel Computing. Kressen has been working on a new form of artificial intelligence that is supposed to be near human. Joy arrives at the facility to interview Kressen for a week of unfettered access. Kressen introduces her to Adam (Rogers) and she marvels about how "human" he is.
Adam begins to notice the Joy and David are becoming enamored with each other and starts to exhibit some creepy behavior. Eventually David has Joy over for a date and she spends the night. Suffice to say Adam is not to happy with this and attacks David. As David and Joy try to escape the building, David succumbs to the effects of the attack and Joy is rendered unconscious. When Joy awakes, David is strapped to a table being vivisected by Adam. She pleads for his life and admits that she loves him. Let's just say there's a really big reveal here.
This isn't a bad film, the acting is fine and the story moves along well and the reveal was good but it was lacking something. That something was I had seen Ex Machina and this film wasn't as good. Uncanny went into a different direction than Ex Machina that I could kind of see coming, though the big reveal was surprising. I would recommend seeing this film but I'd recommend seeing Ex Machina more but why not see both films about AI so you can compare?
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