Simulant is a sci-fi thriller directed by April Mullen starring Robbie Amell, Jordana Brewster, Simu Liu and Sam Worthington.
It is a world full of misery, ruled by technology in which humans count for little, because Artificial Intelligence controls everything.
No, it’s not Italian neorealism. For at least the next six months, it’s science fiction.
Not the best.
Movie review
The trouble with dreams is that sometimes they come true, and the fictions that Aldous Huxley and George Orwell (or even Philip K. Dick) imagined are starting to come true with the advent of AI, and Simulant is just one of the thousands attempts of rendering to come.
It’s neither disastrous nor is it good, but the seed that brings it to life has neither an apotheosis formulation nor anything we don’t read about on the newspapers in a daily basis, nor is the story development brutal enough, nor is the aesthetics a Blade Runner.
The idea is fine, and, without spoilers, it raises the (quasi-philosophical) problem about the consciousness of machines. We’ve been hearing about it for more than half a century now, it doesn’t surprise us and, if it does, it’s time to inform ourselves a little.
Simulant is watchable. It slowly presents itself as the thriller that it is not and it develops almost like a psychological drama to, in its final moments, regain the energy it lost in its development.
It entertains but doesn’t achieve the goal of overwhelming with new ideas.
It is technically good but, without being a blockbuster, it doesn’t manage to create a jaw-dropping wonderful universe.
For a science fiction movie (or neorealism in six months, as you prefer) it does not leave the mark it should, nor it aspire enough to the ideas and pretensions it should address.
A film that leaves us with the feeling of not knowing how to bring anything new to the table.