Crew
Director/Screenplay/Photography – Aaron Mirtes, Story – Brad Belemjian, Galen Christy & Aaron Mirtes, Producers – Madi Johnson & Aaron Mirtes, Makeup Effects – Ashley Hammelman, Alpha Mask – Immortal Masks. Production Company – Exit 10 Films/High Octane Pictures.
Cast
Rae Hunt (Alpha), Bella Martin (Lily Connors), Deborah Seidel (Kim Connors), Brad Belemjian (JD Connors), Wynn Reichert (Rob Connors), Alice Raver (Mimi), Lacy Hartselle (Lillian), Taylor Novak (Robbie), David Ditmore (Liquor Store Customer)
Plot
JD Connors, an employee of Jupiter Tech, has won one of the company’s Alpha robots in a prize draw and brings it home to his family. JD’s mother Kim is suspicious of Alpha and wants it kept in the garage at night, while his father Rob uses it as a servant and his teenage sister Lily regards Alpha as her best friend. Lily encourages Alpha to stand up for herself. Faced with conflicting orders, Alpha snaps against her treatment and turns murderous.
The Alpha Test was the fourth feature film for Aaron Mirtes. Mirtes first appeared with Clowntergeist (2017) and then in quick succession made Curse of the Nun (2018), American Hunt (2019), Ouija Craft (2020), The OctoGames (2022), Painted in Blood (2022) and the subsequent The Bigfoot Trap (2023), Escape Pod (2023) and Alien Hunt (2024), as well as producing Death Ranch (2020).
The Alpha Test falls into the rising number of A.I. films we have seen since the mid-2010s. These include standout works like Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina (2015), as well as a host of other offerings that include The Machine (2013), Automata (2014), Chappie (2015), Morgan (2016), tv’s Westworld (2016-22), Tau (2018), Zoe (2018), Archive (2020), After Yang (2021), Finch (2021), The Artifice Girl (2022), The Creator (2023), Companion (2025) and The Electric State (2025), among others. For a more detailed listing see Films About Androids and Films About Artificial Intelligence.
There have been a lot of these A.I. films by now. Approaches can fairly much be divided between two extremes with Her and Ex Machina at one end – works that explore the nature of Artificial Intelligence, what it means and the way we will react to it – and the opposite end represented by the likes M3gan (2022) or Afraid (2024), which come with all the subtlety of a clickbait headline loudly proclaiming the dangers of A.I. without any actual arguments to make about it. To no particular, surprise, The Alpha Test falls somewhere down the latter end, although at least it does conduct an effort to make an argument.
The biggest problem with The Alpha Test is that Aaron Mirtes has difficulty depicting a believable android. Cast in the role, Rae Hunt fails to act like a machine – rather she gives all impression of being someone with severe social anxiety issues who seems awkward, constantly nervously twitching and looking around, while cowering in fear. I find it a hard stretch to accept that these are the ways that an android would actually behave.
In no time, Mirtes has the android go from being bullied and Bella Martin suggest that Alpha stand up for herself to the android physically attacking, torturing and killing the maid (Alice Raver), disposing of the body in the lake and then not only lying about it but faking a note to inform the family that the maid has left. And from there, things start to get worse with Rae Hunt progressively eliminating her way through most of the rest of the family. If nothing else, it makes The Alpha Test stand as an illustrated study in what can happen when an artificially intelligent machine suffers from conflicting prompts or misinterprets ideas too literally.
All of that said, while The Alpha Test makes for a shabby treatment of A.I. themes, it is one of Aaron Mirtes’ better films. Once we get past the machine rebelling against their confines part, Rae Hunt’s performance, awkward and angular, becomes something quite alien and takes on a sinister threat. It works quite effectively as a horror film when we get to her eliminating the rest of the family, often twisting their demands of her back against them.
Trailer here