- Directed by: Will Howarth, Tom McKeith
- Written by: Will Howarth, Talia Zucker, Tom McKeith
- Stars: Talia Zucker, Ashley Zukerman, Stephanie Arezzi
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 29 Minutes
- Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zv2IMfr6Dwg
Spoiler-Free Judgment Zone
This is heavy on the science fiction, tension, and thrills with some horror elements simmering under the pot. A word of warning, don’t look at IMDB.com before you see this, there is a spoiler. But even when we started figuring things out a bit, there were still surprises. It’s very well made. The acting is excellent, and the setting is perfect. We thought it was on the slow side, but it was never boring. A strong thumbs-up from both of us.
Spoilery Synopsis
We open in the countryside with a ranch and zoom into a large barn full of what appears to be scientific equipment inside.
Layla and Jack wake up and make coffee with tablets (it’s a horror movie after all). Suddenly, an alarm goes off in the barn, and she runs out to find Jack wrestling with a cow in a liquid filled tank. “The system crashed again, she came out of stasis too early.” Dried off and in a scanner, they see the cow has some serious health issues, and Jack says it has to be put down.
Later, Layla sends an email to her son, Toby, who will be visiting for the holidays. The satellite’s out, so the message doesn’t go through. When she mentions painting Toby’s bedroom, Jack gives her a look; there’s more to all this than we know.
A new cattle driver, Brady, arrives, and he watches a video about how the system can produce market-ready cloned cows in less than two weeks. Animal replication is cheaper, faster, and more consistent than making cows the old fashioned way. And they mostly have it perfected.
Another of the cows gets sick, and Jack has to take care of that one as well. At dinner, they argue about going to see Toby. She finds that Toby’s room used to be the exact shade of blue she’s chosen, and then they painted over it for some reason.
Jack gets injured dealing with some animals and gets a concussion. Layla hears someone rummaging around out in the kitchen, but whoever it is is gone by the time she goes in. She goes outside with a gun and is attacked by… a copy of herself.
Layla goes into the barn and checks out Jack’s special cloning tanks. Sure enough, one that was kind of hidden away shows signs of use. She also leaves a note for the “outside” Layla to come meet her in the greenhouse. When Jack recovers, she doesn’t say anything to him.
The two Laylas meet and talk. The strange Layla has bad eyes, so she’s not going to last long – she came out too soon like that first cow did. She asks how Toby is, and the real Layla says he’s off at school. The clone has her memories. Layla gets the car to take her clone to the hospital, but the car won’t start for her. Jack fires Brady, who objects and implies that he knows more than we or Layla know about what’s really going on, but Jack threatens him off with a gun.
Jack knows that Layla knows – he found the note Layla left for the other. Jack says he’s not trying to kill the other Layla, but he’s not convincing. “She was never supposed to wake up, she was just a test. There are people out there that would pay a lot of money for this technology.”
The Laylas gang up on Jack with the shotgun. He gets the upper hand, but Brady shows up and whacks him with a tire iron. They all get away in Brady’s pickup truck. Jack shoots at them, and the truck dies not far away. Jack’s had Layla’s wedding ring altered with a tracker and goes after them.
Brady explains that Jack’s business was shut down years ago. Brady isn’t really a trucker, Jack just hired him to make it look like the ranch was still in business. Why doesn’t she know this? Jack finds them and stabs Brady repeatedly. The girls run and hide, but the sickly one just can’t keep up. Copy Layla is left behind. Original Layla is able to escape in Jack’s car and goes to a gas/electric station not too far away. She gets on a pay phone and calls Toby’s school, but the school says Toby left there years ago.
She goes to the college and spots Toby, who is quite a bit older than she remembers. Then she watches a car drive up and another Layla gets out to pick up her son. Who’s the real Layla now? Our Layla follows them home and breaks into their house after that Layla leaves for work. She finds divorce paperwork and also a restraining order against Jack. Apparently after the real Layla left him and took their son, he made a Layla of his own. Toby comes in and doesn’t know the difference, but wonders why she’s back home from work and changed. Layla makes excuses, embraces him and leaves after Toby does.
Now that she knows what’s going on, she goes back to Jack at the farm. He says there were many attempts before he finally got it right with her. He made another copy because he could tell she was getting restless and heading toward leaving him like before. She says they can pretend none of this happened, and they can go back to the way things were. When he drops his guard, she shoots him in the head. Layla then cuts off Jack’s thumb to use for the security lock on his equipment.
Time passes and we see her selling some cows to a man she thanks who leaves. Toby’s room is painted blue now and fully decorated. The final reveal is when the camera pans around to show her outside, talking to a little Toby of her own…
Brian’s Commentary
The trailer had us both expecting mutant cow-human hybrid monsters. That would have been cool, but what we got was more creative than that.
We both came up with theories about what was going on at about the twenty-minute point, and soon learned that we were both right about what was going on not long after but there was a lot more to it than we anticipated.
It had some twists that I was not expecting, and, although it was a little slow-moving, it never got boring. The acting was good all around, and it all looked great.
I liked it.
Kevin’s Commentary
I saw the IMDB cast list ahead of time that lists “Other Layla,” so I knew that was coming. But that’s hinted at and revealed early in the movie anyway, and there is more to it than that. It’s one that unfolds very nicely. Like Brian said, I was expecting more of a creature feature with monster cows or something, but that’s not what it was about. I think it’s completely realistic to believe that if that technology was available, people like Jack would do things like this if they could. It raises some ethical questions to think about. And I wonder what Layla’s plan for little clone Toby was as he grew up. I’d call this one excellent.