DebugWritten and directed by David Hewlett

Signature Entertainment, out now

Artificial intelligence gets homicidal…

A group of prisoners – think Misfits but with hackers instead of super-powered teens – are on a spaceship, charged with shutting it down, but find themselves at the mercy of an artificial intelligence with designs on being much more than just a machine in David Hewlett’s sometimes tense and shocking movie.

True, there’s little here that you’ve not seen in other films, and it does feel at times as if Hewlett throws in everything but the kitchen sink. There are elements of the original Cube movie here, as well as Resident Evil (and of course, the granddaddy of such SF films, 2001: A Space Odyssey), but Hewlett brings some nice visual touches to Debug – the use of the Heads Up Displays in particular. Jason Momoa is suitably menacing as the AI with ideas above its station, and the rest of the cast – although they’re basically cannon fodder – are each given at least a few moments in the spotlight.

Verdict: It’s never going to make anyone’s Top 10 list of best SF movies, but Hewlett’s movie provides an entertaining 90 or so minutes. 6/10

Paul Simpson

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