Look away now if you don’t want spoilers.

You have been warned.

I had an urge to write about the film I watched last night and thought, this could be a thing for me. I can write film reviews. It doesn’t have to be perfect, I want to try it out. Try something new. I was also inspired by this Instagram post below – thanks Sophia! And here I go. All thoughts are my own.

I had zero expectations for this film. My friend chose it and I thought that seems a bit different, yeah let’s go for it. I’d picked Baby Girl for us to watch last month and that was quite an experience to say the least. People left the cinema after half an hour…I digress.

I was so pleasantly surprised. From the off, I disliked all the characters. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being stuck in a house with them in the middle of nowhere. It was weird vibes. My bad feeling about the boyfriend Josh occurred almost instantly. There was something about him telling Iris to “make sure you smile” and “look happy”, that grated me. As women it takes us back to all the times we’ve been told to smile by men. Instantly, I wasn’t happy with him. And my instincts were right.

I was intrigued by Iris and I was particularly intrigued by her conversation with Kat, one of Josh’s friends, who Iris is desperate to impress. Iris says to her that she doesn’t feel liked by her, to which Kat responds “it’s not that I don’t like you, you make me feel replaceable”. I thought it was odd. What does that even mean? So the twist that Iris is a robot early on then made a lot of sense, I should have seen it coming by the film title, really. (I hadn’t seen the trailer in my defence.)

I found myself rooting for Iris to escape alongside our fellow viewers in the cinema, it was thrilling, exciting and dangerous. I also enjoyed the humour throughout despite the subject being quite heavy – the film was exploring a future that’s already happening. Robots as companions. Sex bots and the creation of them for ‘male pleasure’. Iris as a companion for Josh, to love him and do anything for him – emotionally, sexually and practically.

Humour was a powerful tool. My favourite part being when Iris discovered Josh had set her intelligence to 40%. How insulting. The audacity. It was a satisfying moment to see her immediately increase this to 100%. The less intelligent Iris was, the more controllable and mouldable she was to what he wanted. An incel’s dream right?

I also enjoyed the ‘meet cute’ of Eli and Patrick at the party, mentioned at the very beginning of the dinner, with the dinosaur costume. It created a much needed lightness to the awful events we were watching unfold. The repetition of this with Patrick and Josh was a little more menacing, demonstrating the complete lack of power and control of the robots. This was starkly contrasted with the cheesy, light hearted ‘Lil Boo Thang’ by Paul Russell playing in the background.

The whole movie for me came back to Josh. It wasn’t just about the humans vs robots trope, it was about the ‘nice guy’. The man who on the surface might seem perfectly good, respectful and normal. But who, unsurprisingly, blamed women for all of his hardships and monologued about how difficult life was for people like him (a straight white man). The incel energy was palpable. It was difficult to watch, not to mention the violence we witnessed from him against Iris.

I enjoyed the ending. Iris finally has total control of herself and that’s what we as an audience were rooting for. It felt like a very topical movie especially as technology, AI and robots blend more and more into our everyday lives and relationships.

Overall, I’d give this film 4 stars out of 5. I enjoyed the twist, and the eerie and uncomfortable atmosphere it created. It was full of action and I enjoyed the ending with Iris’s new found freedom.

Do let me know if you enjoyed this blog and I’m keen to hear your thoughts – whether you agree or disagree with how I felt or thought about it! This might become a more regular thing. The question is, what to watch next?