The Science Fiction Horror and Fantasy Film Review
The term Artificial Intelligence (often abbreviated to A.I.) is used to refer to machines that have developed the ability to think independently, human-like personalities and/or emotions. A.I.’s can range from Robots and Androids to Super-Computers.
The 1960s and 70s were filled with assorted plots involving evil super-computers turning against humanity. From Star Wars (1977) onwards, the A.I., became something cuddly and user-friendly. The Terminator (1984) brought a return to the evil A.I. and lethal killer robot.
By the time of the rise of Cyberpunk, the A.I. had faded into the background and become an accepted part of the scenery. As debates about such heat up in the real world, the latter half of the 2010s have brought a renewed interest in the possibility of artificial intelligence and what it would look like.
A.I.’s and other machines that turn against humanity are discussed under Films About Machines Amok.
Outside of animation, there has never been a decent genre film about cute dogs. This film about a robot dog is no exception. The surprise is that this is produced by the normally respectable David S. Goyer
This was the first anime film made in CGI, an ambitious SF film involving a time travel plot and a struggle against a machine-dominated future
The first film to come out following the advent of generative A.I. From American Pie director Chris Weitz, an evil A.I. film that arrives with all the hysteria of villagers with burring torches in a Frankenstein film
Steven Spielberg directs an unfinished Stanley Kubrick project about an android boy’s quest. The result is a beautiful and intelligent SF film where the sensibilities of either director merge with magnificent results
There have been a host of works about artificial intelligence in recent years. This is a worthwhile entry in the field about the relationship between a man and an android on a space mission
Airplane was a parody of the disaster movie that proved a hit. This was a sequel that expands the action aboard the space shuttle and contains many SF in-jokes but to generally lesser effect
One of the most influential films on this site, producing a host of sequels and making the careers of all involved. At heart, a simple monster on a spaceship film, it is made into a classic through Ridley Scott’s relentless suspense and H.R. Giger’s design work
Another film on the topic of androids and A.I.’s run amok. This concerns a robot maid that ends up rebelling against her human owners and turning murderous due to conflicting orders
Witty and quite charming low-budget SF film with Don Opper as a gawky android on a space station trying to understand the human condition amid the arrival of escaped convicts
A painfully cheap film that feels like an amateur effort that was accidentally given a dvd release. Essentially Resident Evil but with killer robots instead of zombies, this shouts its impoverishment from every scene
An early Takashi Miike film where a teenage girl is killed and her personality uploaded to the internet, having been conveniently backed up by her father on three cd roms!
Film based on a full-length Swedish SF poem that concerns the despair, emptiness and strange societies that emerge among those aboard a spaceship that is thrown off course
To accompany their two Matrix sequels, The Wackowskis hired seven anime directors to each make a short film set in The Matrix universe. The results are often quite remarkable
A quickie effort made by Albert Pyun for Charles Band’s Full Moon Productions to exploit the Virtual Reality themes popularised by The Lawnmower Man, concerning a malevolent VR videogame
One of the better in the fad for Artificial Intelligence films we have had since the 2010s with Theo James trying to place his late wife’s consciousness into an android body
Behind the generic action movie title, this is an SF about a unit of soldiers led by Wesley Snipes venturing into an automated prison to investigate the death of personnel by an unknown force
One of the best of the recent spate of artificial intelligence films. A programmer creates an A.I. for the purpose of trapping sexual predators on the internet only to be faced with ethical questions about what he has created
The idea of Jennifer Lopez in a transformer suit kicking robot ass has an outlandishness to it. The surprise is that this is a really good, well written SF film of planetary survival
This Blade Runner-influenced work about robots that develop artificial intelligence is exceptional, featuring a particularly captivating last half with Antonio Banderas journeying with strangely alive robots
Olivier Gruner plays an android who goes rogue after accidentally killing his boss. A dull action film with no greater ambition than to be an SF version of Die Hard
Another among the recent spate of Artificial Intelligence film, the story of a secretary who befriends a robot. This is an A.I. film on a B-budget that you feel should have been made as a comedy
The first Avengers film came with a massive anticipation in seeing the characters come together and the snappiness of their interplay; here this seems more flat, while the rest is overrun by wall-to-wall action
Isaac Asimov may not have been the best science-fiction writer ever but his stories buzzed with challenging ideas. In the hands of Chris Columbus, one of Asimov’s robot stories is reduced to mawkish sentimentalism
French director Jean-Pierre Jeunet of The City of Lost Children and Amelie fame returns with an appealingly eccentric, beautifully designed comedic take on the machine revolution
Third of the Harry Palmer spy films starring Michael Caine, which were made as a more grounded alternative to James Bond. Unfortunately, this has been placed in the hands of Ken Russell who overblows everything with a giddy eatravagance
From the extraordinary and underrated Scooter McCrae, a dark and very disturbing film about the development of a sex robot for men who like to beat and abuse women
Modest and quite effective Dean R. Koontz adaptation in which Jay Mohr is trapped in a small town run by an A.I. that does everything it can to prevent him from leaving
Near future set science-fiction noir as a cyborg-enhanced hero is drawn in to conduct an investigation on behalf of a morally ambiguous femme fatale. Despite a reasonable effort made, this is a little too low key
Ridley Scott’s film was not a success at the time but has since been regarded as a SF masterpiece, one of the defining screen treatments of android themes while the incredibly dense Cyberpunk vision of the future was copied by many subsequent films
Blade Runner is a landmark classic but this is well worthwhile sequel from Denis Villeneuve that recreates the fascinating Cyberpunk world in more detail and expands out on the themes laid down in the original. Made with impeccably beautiful detail
A film about a writer who retreats to a fully automated smarthome in order to complete a novel only to end up imprisoned by a malfunctioning A.I.
Epic and beautifully animated anime set largely underwater about the struggle to save a dying Earth from an evil super-computer that wants eradicate humanity
TV mini-series adaptation of Aldous Huxley’s classic dystopian novel. Developed by Grant Morrison, this freely adapts the novel but does a strong and intelligent job of reimagining it in contemporary terms
At contrast to all the serious films being made about A.I, and androids, this is a wonderfully charming and really quite eccentric comedy where a man builds a robot out of junk
Spinoff from Michael Bay’s Transformers films. As though all it took was a change of director, this becomes a quite enjoyable film. Rather than another of Bay’s orgies of mass destruction, this is a small sweet film that has more in common with E.T.
After calls to do so, The MCU offers up their first superheroine with very unexceptional results. A competent enough effort but DC’s Wonder Woman easily blows everything this tries to do out of the water
Neill Blomkamp’s film about A.I. turns into Short Circuit dropped into the militarised future of RoboCop. Of all the rich possibilities in the idea, all we get is a goofy comedy with a pimped-out carjacking robot
The controversial remake of Child’s Play where Chucky is no longer possessed but become an artificially intelligent smart toy. This seems to misconstrues everything that the fanbase of the series celebrates by a mile
SF neo-noir that suffers from a painfully low budget (particularly when it comes to its CGI) but transcends this with a consistently intelligent story and a world created with a reasonable sense of verisimilitude
Produced not long after 2001: A Space Odyssey, this is one of the smartest and best of the super-computer takes over the world films, directed with a tight economy and written with a snappy wit
A smart and extremely clever variant on Androids/A.I. themes with Sophie Thatcher as a sex android who gains self-awareness and independence. A great script filled with hilarious whiplash twists.
Quirky film shot as though a mockumentary from the 1970s about a conference where programmers compete against computer chess programs that starts to get into some puzzlingly weird SF territory
Gareth Edwards, the director of Monsters and Godzilla, makes a genre-defining work about robotics and artificial intelligence set in a stunningly detailed future world. This site’s Top Film for 2023
Australian thriller about an inventor who has created an A.I,, although the film only puts it at the purpose of a routine murder mystery plot
Don ‘The Dragon’ Wilson stars as a law enforcement officer pursued by killer androids in a blatant made-for-video action movie copy of the basics of The Terminator and RoboCop
An absurd action movie copy of Die Hard where Michael Dudikoff tries to stop terrorist Brion James as he seek to steal an artificially intelligent computer virus
A Japanese romantic comedy about a lonely nerd who falls in love with a cyborg girl that has time travelled back from the future
From Arrowstorm Entertainment, a low-budget company that make highly professional films. Here they have even roped Danny Trejo into playing a role in a passable attempt to replicate a 1990s Albert Pyun post-holocaust cyborg film
SF film about a woman suffering amnesia who is sent to an automated house to recuperate only to be made prisoner by the sinister A.I. that runs the house
John Carpenter’s first film, made as a student project in collaboration with an also unknown Dan O’Bannon. A send-up of the boldly going space exploration of Star Trek, this features a ship where the crew are going stir crazy. The results are hilarious
Death Race 2000 was a hit for producer Roger Corman. It was remade minus the satire as a straight action film with Death Race; here Corman remakes the original (albeit very cheaply) and restores the satire
Actor David Hewlett directs a B-budget film where a team of convicted hackers are sent to clean out the computers on a spaceship only to come up against a malevolent A.I.
The return of the talented Steve Barron after a decade’s absence in a film that was shot in my own backyard (literally). Disappointingly, all we get is a work that unimaginatively rehashes cliches about amok A.I.s
Adaptation of an early Dean R. Koontz novel about an A.I who imprisons a woman in her own home with the intention of impregnating her. A variant on Rosemary’s Baby conducted far more tastefully than you might think
Extraordinary anime where the members of an after school club secretly harbour great powers. From there, this expands out with reality-bending scope
South Korean anthology containing a trio of tales on the theme of the end of the world. The standout is the middle segment, a very Asimovian tale wherein a robot claims to have logically attained Buddhist enlightenment
Robert Heinlein’s time travel novel gets a surprisingly faithful adaptation from Japan. This keeps the story’s double structure that tells one story and then with considerable conceptual dexterity reveals another hidden in the margins
Modest and conceptually packed B-budget action film in which a motley team are sent to break into a bunker that has been hijacked by a scientist who is threatening to fire nuclear missiles
An anthology film produced by Charles Band where assorted directors turn in seven episodes all centred around a videogame warrior put through a series of tests by The Devil
Shia LaBeouf ends up on the run from the FBI in a conspiracy involving an A.I. A thriller about the surveillance society that, despite much sound and fury, finds almost nothing to say about its subject
TV mini-series that came out hoping to ride the coattails of Star Trek: The Next Generation but looks dated barely ten years later. Somehow the idea of teenagers on a space mission didn’t get many audiences enthused
Lightweight, rather silly effort where Lenny Von Dohlen’s home computer becomes sentient and the two compete for the love of neighbour Virginia Madsen
This is a film that had the capacity within its hands to be a class work about A.I. and robotics. Adapted from the art of Simon Stålenhag and directed by the Russo Brothers who were behind the last two Avengers films
A rare Bollywood venture into science-fiction – a completely madcap android intelligence/amok film that features some wildly imaginative action scenes, all set amid typical Bollywood song and dance/romance numbers
The field has been open for one work to come and set the benchmark for A.I. films. Alex Garland’s Ex Machina arrives at that work. Rather than flashy effects, this resides in a series of beautifully cool debates and sharply intelligent twists
At first glance, this seems a routine alien invasion film. However, this becomes a whole lot more watchable with a mid-film twist that turns what is going on on its head
Unexpectedly delightful film about a man and a robot. With Tom Hanks alone with a robot for company in the aftermath of civilisation, it becomes in effect Cast Away meets Wall-E
Ryan Reynolds discovers he is a character inside a videogame. This has a conceptual ingenuity and originality and is the most fun and outrightly enjoyable mainstream film seen of recent
SF film with Stephen Moyer as a spaceship survivor who boards a ship with the crew mysteriously dead and becomes caught up in interplanetary politicking
The major distinction this has is in starring murdered Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. An SF comedy made in the aftermath of Star Wars where Stratten is an android on a ship voyage romancing her human commander
Classic anime from Mamoru Oshii, a Cyberpunk work with a heroine who is a cyborg special forces officer, a work that delves deeply into the philosophical questions of what is human and what is machine
The live-action adaptation of a popular anime and manga, this takes place in an alternate history version of Japan where samurai fight following an alien invasion
The second of the anime Godzilla films and much more successful than its predecessor. The reconceptions of some of the classic monsters has a dazzling ambitiousness while Godzilla has all the ferocity it should have had in the first film
A completely mad and all over the place film with Sam Rockwell as a time traveller (or madman) arrived at a diner to recruit six people on a mission to save the world from the development of an evil A.I.
A compilation of shorts from anime directors set in the Halo videogame universe. The first two episodes have a breathtaking scale but the others are bitsy stories but nothing standout
This is considered the film that torpedoed Andy Kaufman’s film career – a dippy romance between two robots. This gets very silly but the film has undeniable charms
Spike Jonze addresses virtual relationships in this story of a romance between a man and an A.I. A film that is astonishing in its freshness, naturalness and avoidance of any of the cliches that have dogged other treatments.
The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was a multi-media phenomenon that has developed a cult. The tv series with a less-than-stellar BBC budget was not the most effective incarnation of these but still hits the wittily absurd nerve of Douglas Adams’ humour
The big-budget film version of The Hitch Hiker’s Guide phenomenon is a disaster that fumbles Douglas Adams’s absurdist wit and blows everything up with big-budget effects and a pitch to American audiences
Horror movie about computer game designers dealing with a motion-capture suit that has gained life and is trying to kill them. This has nothing in common with the 1950s film beyond the title
An SF film with minimal resources – just two characters in a desert – that deliver a modest variant on the Enemy Mine scenario about an alien and human enemy stranded on a planet
Disappointing adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Robot stories. The film pays token acknowledgement to Asimov’s characters and universe and mostly seems interested in spectacular effects set-pieces
Low-budget director Ulli Lommel makes a film about a teen who befriends an artificially intelligent rogue military helicopter
Former Pixar director Andrew Stanton, known for Finding Nemo, Wall-E and the flop of John Carter, makes a cross-historical in the vein of Cloud Atlas that takes place between prehistory, the present and the future
Reality bender with a man held in an automated prison where he must outsmart the prison’s A.I. in order to escape
Ridiculous film that throws in an incomprehensible mix of amok A.I.’s, UFOs and military conspiracy and proves badly made on every single count
A spinoff designed to feature Forbidden Planet‘s scene-stealer Robbie the Robot where he has been sent back in time to the present and is befriended by a young boy
This where the MCU began after a spate of high-profile Marvel Comics adaptations throughout the 2000s. Jon Favreau conducts a highly enjoyable adaptation of the comic-book with Robert Downey Jr shining in the role of Tony Stark
True to typical superhero sequel form, this complicates the original by introducing so many new villains and characters that it becomes an overcrowded narrative juggling act
A major disappointment. Firstly, stripping the superhero of the show of his suit is dull, makes for no more than a regular action hero, while the film’s treatment of comic-book canon and reduction of Iron Man’s No 1 villain to a cardboard threat ranks somewhere down alongside a Batsuit with nipples
Amiable comedy about an annoyingly intrusive artificially intelligent mobile assistant that wreaks havoc on its owner’s life
Phantasm series director Don Coscarelli returns with this mind-expanding effort that seems a conceptual collision between Donnie Darko, Limitless, a slacker version of Supernatural and Marvel Comics’ Dr Strange. Maybe the best mind-tripping fun it is possible to have without the use of illegal substances
Crisis on Infinite Earths was one of the classic DC Comics titles of all time. This is an animated film adaptation
While the title suggests a series of malicious games, this is an SF film about a group of people who participate in an augmented reality experiment where they are locked in a facility with strangely alien children
There have been some extremely good entries amid the spate of films about androids and A.I. in the last few years. This one about an android manservant is so ridiculous it should have been played as a comedy
Sequel to the killer doll film that is a much better work than its predecessor
Horror film about an artificially intelligent doll that resembles one of the Big Eyes paintings, which proceeds to go full-on Terminator
A fascinating and well told work about artificial intelligence and mind upload. If the third act falls into disappointingly cliched patterns, this is nearly three-quarters of a strong and intelligent science-fiction film
Tobe Hooper’s The Mangler was one of the worst of all Stephen King adaptations and this is modern sequel generating of the worst order where the Mangler now becomes an A.I. and a computer virus
Group of young people get away to a smarthome for the weekend, which then tries to kill them. We have had a spate of films of recent about smarthome A.I.’s run amok. This is the possibly the most ridiculous