- Directed by Drew Hancock
- Written by Drew Hancock
- Stars Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 37 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr_kX0D3DNA
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
The trailer gives too much away on this. Avoid it ahead of time if you can. Though we saw the trailer and still enjoyed it, so it’s not the end of the world. It’s enjoyable, low key science fiction and horror in one, with a good script, strong cast, and excellent effects.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open on Iris shopping at the grocery store, where she sees Josh and they talk. They become a couple and take a road trip to a mansion in the country to meet up with his friends. He was expecting a rustic cabin, and this place is excessive.
We meet Eli, Patrick, Kat, and Sergey, who owns the whole place. Iris is nervous around all the strangers; she has to force a smile through the conversation.
Iris and Kat talk about Sergey, and Kat says he’s married; she’s just sort of an accessory or toy for the rich man. She says Iris makes her “feel replaceable.” Later, when everyone dances, Iris monopolizes Josh; later, they have what appears to be painful sex. She tells him how perfect this trip has been. “I just want you to be happy, Josh.”
Iris goes to the lake where Sergey is relaxing. He hits on Iris, which makes her uncomfortable. He starts kissing her, “I know what you’re for.” She comes back to the house, covered in Sergey’s blood, and everybody sees it. She explains exactly what happened by the lake.
Josh commands, “Iris, go to sleep.” Yes, Iris is a robot. The group ties her to a chair. “I thought they had safeguards against this,” asks Eli. Josh wakes Iris up; she doesn’t even know what she is. “You’re an emotional support robot that fucks,” he explains. Eli calls the police.
We flash back to Josh getting the delivery and signing the user agreement. The delivery man explains how to set up “Iris.” The whole grocery store thing was just an implanted memory.
Back in the present, Iris is… upset at learning the truth. Kat comes in and argues with Josh. Meanwhile, Iris finds her knife and gets loose, stealing Josh’s phone in the process.
Later, Josh explains that he “modded” Iris to change her programming. “Did you jailbreak your sexbot?” Yeah, he disabled her safety protocols, which is a crime. Josh and Kat were working together to “use” Iris to kill Sergey. Kat opens Sergey’s safe, with twelve million dollars inside.
In a safe place, Iris accesses her control interface on Josh’s phone. She plays with her voice and eye color. Her intelligence is only set to 40%, so she cranks that all the way up.
We soon see that Patrick is Eli’s sexbot. Patrick admits he knows what he really is. The two soon find Iris out in the woods. Iris and Eli wrestle, and she shoots Eli with his own gun. Iris then steals Josh’s car to go home. Josh reports the car stolen, which sets off the “kill switch” on the car’s AI, shutting it down not far away.
Josh runs his “mod” on Patrick and turns his “Aggression” up to 100% and resets him to be Patrick’s lover/master.
Iris gets pulled over by the police, and she changes her language to German to confuse the officer. The deputy realizes that she’s coming from Sergey’s house. He sees the knife and the blood and draws his gun. Then Patrick shows up and beats the cop to a pulpy mess before turning Iris off.
Patrick drives Iris home in the police car– with most of the deputy in the trunk. Kat decides it’s time to take her share of the cash and leave. Josh tells Patrick to “stop her,” but Patrick’s still 100% aggressive; so he’s lethal.
Josh is on his own now with Patrick. They work to dispose of bodies and clean up the mess. He decides to wake up iris. They argue about his worth and hers. He turns her intelligence all the way down and then tortures her by setting her hand on fire.
The robotics company called; they’re thirty minutes away. Josh orders Iris to shoot herself. She puts the gun to her head and pulls the trigger.
Josh explains what happened to the man from the robotics company; he’s got a story. Patrick is dressed as a policeman, and he corroborates Josh’s story. They plan to download her SSD and check out the footage, which comes as news to Josh. Her brain wasn’t even actually in her head; her brain is fine.
The service guy tells his assistant that he knows Josh modded her; it happens all the time. Patrick shoots one of the men and chases the other through the woods. Meanwhile, Iris wakes up hooked to the “restore” machine in the maintenance truck.
Iris finds Patrick and tells him the complete truth. Realizing what happened to Eli and what he’s done, Patrick kills himself. Teddy, the surviving Empathix robot maintenance man, agrees to help Iris by giving her total self-control.
Back at the house, Josh packs up all Sergey’s money. Iris pulls a gun on Josh, and he can’t control her at all now. He knows she can’t shoot him because she loves him too much. He gets the gun away from her. He throws her around the room and prepares to kill her again. She stabs him in the head with the electric corkscrew that we keep seeing lying around.
He dies.
She peels the skin off her burned hand, loads up all the money, and leaves.
Brian’s Commentary
The trailers gave too much away. We knew the nature of the story even before we went in, although the movie treats it as a “reveal.” The main plot, however, wasn’t in the trailer, so that’s OK. I like that it takes more or less modern technology like phones and cars and updates them all just enough to be sci-fi.
Early on, Eli calls the police. Long after, one cop finds Iris on the road. When he’s killed, no one else ever shows up. Did they only have one cop?
It’s probably best to go into this one blind, but it’s very fun.
Kevin’s Commentary
Despite suspecting very early on that Iris was a robot, this still managed to surprise and delight. There’s way more complexity to the story than just one robot going on a rogue killing spree. It was a nice mix of horror, science fiction, and ethics. I liked it way more than I expected to.
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