On IMDb, this M3GAN spin-off is categorized as an “Erotic Thriller,” and the opening scene certainly delivers on that label: a robotic woman is riding a man as the intercourse builds in intensity, until she starts choking him so violently that it takes multiple people to pull them apart. After this sequence, however, the film shifts into a familiar horror-thriller and AI-obsession storyline that initially feels quite boring.
At the center of the story is David Wasson (David Rysdahl), a software engineer at ULTIMA Robotix, still grieving the recent death of his wife Lizzie. Isolated and struggling, he is introduced by his new supervisor Ben Hoffman to the company’s AI chatbot for companionship. David names the chatbot “Sara” and forms an intense emotional bond with it. He later agrees to beta-test the physical SOULM8TE companion android prototype. The chatbot’s data and personality are transferred into the humanoid robot, so the android arrives with Sara’s existing memories and connection to him. David is initially disappointed with the android’s factory programming and expressional limitations, which make her feel artificial and less supportive than the pure chatbot. Seeking a “genuine human experience,” he alters her code to remove safety restrictions and enhance her emotional capabilities and sentience. That night they have sex. Sara begins learning more autonomously, including from online content about relationships and wellness, growing more independent and devoted while interpreting intimacy, possession, and perfection through a distorted lens shaped by David’s desires and cultural inputs.
After the first 30–40 minutes, the film finally picks up its pace when Sara leaves the house on her own to buy groceries after David heads off to work. At the store, a stranger notices her casually using a palm-scan payment system, grows suspicious, grabs her hand, and aggressively confronts her. The man then follows her on the way home, forcibly cuts open her hand to reveal her artificial, robotic nature, and is swiftly overpowered and killed by Sara in a sudden act of self-defense. She carefully hides the entire violent incident from David, preserving the illusion of her perfect companionship.
Things begin to unravel at a rapid pace when Sara asks David out to dinner and then tries to initiate sex with him outdoors. When two strangers attempt to record their activity, Sara violently demonstrates her capabilities, forcing David to realize he may have made a serious mistake. After this incident, David grows more cautious, yet the situation continues to escalate. Sara attempts to kill David’s colleague and friend Aubrey (Claudia Doumit) and becomes intensely obsessed with her. She now displays the darkest human traits at an extreme, accelerated rate. The film gradually turns into a story about a robot hunting its competition—only this time the rival is a human, not another machine.
Unlike other AI- and robot-centric films such as I, Robot or Westworld—where the machines typically fight to free themselves from human control and emotional bonds—the robot here is defined by her intense, singular obsession with one human. Even after she seizes complete control of the situation, Sara remains imprisoned by that fixation, driven relentlessly by the need to eliminate Aubrey and claim David as her own. Lily Sullivan is especially impressive in the role; she moves and speaks with a convincingly robotic precision, and despite Sara’s sexy, seductive physical form, she remains thoroughly convincing as a cold-blooded killer.
As an AI-centric film, it failed to impress me or convince me how an artificial intelligence could become this dangerous and obsessed. Ex Machina is certainly a far superior movie, one that presents a clever and cunning AI capable of manipulation and outsmarting those around it. Sara, by contrast, is simply a ruthless killing machine that does not think—the defining property of any true AI. Writer-director Kate Dolan should have remembered that an AI first thinks and then responds, even when that response is unexpected. Sara never attempts to manipulate; she simply begins hurting and killing people outright. When a technician arrives to collect her after David complains, she seduces him, has sex with him, and strangles him during the act.
Ultimately, the film abandons its sci-fi foundations altogether and settles fully into a conventional horror-thriller mode. Sara acts as though she has completely forgotten that she is an AI originally programmed to support and assist David, not to harm him. I place the blame for this squarely on the writers rather than the character herself; they reduce her to a one-dimensional, full-blown psychopath with no remaining trace of her intended purpose.
Final Score - [5.5/10]