Starring Sam Worthington, Simu Liu, Jordana Brewster

Directed by Rubin Stein

Sky Cinema

When Faye replaces her deceased husband with a humanoid simulant, the new ‘Evan’ recruits a hacker to remove the legal restrictions on his behaviour, triggering a manhunt by an investigator of rogue AI.

What does it mean to be human? It’s a profound question which, unfortunately, has become the cue for hours of tedious and clichéd drama at a time when the development of AI needs serious interrogation. Consequently, if you’re going to ask people to watch yet another movie on this theme then you had better have something original to say. The sad thing about Simulant is that it very nearly does go somewhere fresh.

After taking an age to establish its premise, there are some moments of real potential. The simulant, Evan (Robbie Amell) is rejected by Faye (Jordana Brewster) precisely because his behaviour is trammelled by the ‘precepts’ (basically Asimov’s three laws of Robotics), but there are serious consequences when Casey (Simu Liu) disengages them. At this point I started to pay attention. Was Simulant going to use its narrative to explore whether humans are actually too dangerous to be human?

Spoiler alert. It doesn’t.

What follows is a run-of-the-mill rehash of Humans watered down with a neutered take on Blade Runner with Sam Worthington doing his best as a sort of scruffy Poundland Deckard.

Verdict: Simulant isn’t dreadful but it needed a far more astute editorial hand on the dramatic tiller to stop it sailing merrily past those more interesting waters. 4/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com