A.M.I.

 

Name: A.M.I. 

Directed By: Rusty Nixon

Subgenre: Sci Fi, Slasher

Series: Spooktober 2019 entry #7; review #38

Review: A.M.I. follows Debs Howard, an actress in her thirties who plays Cassie, a 17 year old girl who develops an unhealthy relationship with her phone's personal assistant AI to help cope with the death of her mother. A.M.I. stands for Artificial Machine Learning, and when Cassie programs it to become a digital reincarnation of her mother, things start to go downhill. See, Cassie isn't really dealing with her trauma in the healthiest ways, and Mother starts to tinker with that feedback loop toward increasingly sinister ends. The film has your standard teen-scream horror movie tropes, but the inclusion of the AI personal assistant makes it feel like slasher tropes were haphazardly smashed into a bad episode of Black Mirror (with social commentary and all). Looking back on the film now, the cardinal sin of the film's execution--ignoring how it capitalized on the then-recent trend of evil phones--is that it's boring. It doesn't do anything particularly interesting--the film's titular AI, "Mother," becomes a character too quickly that it darts past the uncanny valley (which is a perfect space to reside for horror films) to the point where it/she no longer feels like an AI, causing the film to feel less than immersive. I know, that's a bizarre thing to narrow in on when I could poke fun at the liberal use of jock stereotypes portrayed by an entire cast that's well beyond their teenage years, the increasingly cheesy dialogue, and the various plot-holes. But here's the thing: I didn't hate this movie. I should, but I don't; it presents like a bog-standard teen-scream flick but inserts a few genuinely tense scenes (mostly thinking about the fluffy cat here) with some unexpected violence that culminates in the stupidest, most hilariously perfect ending. I can't believe the film takes itself that seriously, and that gets points in my book. A.M.I. is a teenage slasher that capitalizes on all of the played out clichés but inserts just enough new life (by way of the killer AI) and goofiness that it feels, well...passable, even with its many, many flaws.

Overall Score: 2.5 out of 5 Chads hiding from 30-year-old-teenagers and their killer cell-phones. Did A.M.I. scare you? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!

IMDB: Here

How to Watch: A.M.I. is available on these platforms.

Official Trailer