Simulant – A Bland Sci-Fi Thriller (Early Review)

The sci-fi genre has often been used to ponder life’s big questions through stories that share parallels with today to help audiences understand and question their current world. Tackling countless themes in countless different ways, after a while, the films feel like subtle variations of the same themes more or less handled the same way despite varying budgets or advances in filmmaking. Therefore, it is only natural to get bored. When it comes to Simulant, it doesn’t bring all that new to the table in what seemingly amounted to quantity over quality. In contrast to the film’s relatively short running time clocking in at around the 90-minute mark, it sure packs a lot of generic themes, characters, and subplots in there that may have promise individually but together, fail to make a cohesive whole. For an indie Canadian production, the film pulls off an impressive world on a technical level. However, the narrative doesn’t quite reach that same level, ultimately succumbing to its own ambition. Built on the thinnest of foundations in order to facilitate that ambition, what was a formidable cast can only do so much with thin characters. Working from the top down, the film appeared to never get back down to them.

Simulant takes place in the near future where humans share the world with androids who acted like robots and assisted in many of their lives. On the other hand, the world also featured androids called simulants, what set them apart was how much they looked like humans, so much so that it would be hard to tell them apart from humans. Regardless, all androids must abide by the four precepts which essentially were to not harm and obey humans, not break any laws, not interfere with other androids. That being said, rapidly advancing technology and the increasing involvement in the lives of humans was deemed controversial by a large contingent. Evan (Amell) and Faye Aline (Brewster) were a wealthy couple who possessed their own assistance android. However, a mysterious car accident caused friction in their relationship until the truth and an unexpected reveal that Evan died in the crash and was replaced with a simulant changed everything but the distance between the two remained. Thinking it would help her to overcome the loss of her husband, it just made Faye’s grief worse.

Instead of deactivating Evan according to the law, he found himself in the hands of a principled programmer named Casey (Liu) for whom he was a means to a much larger plan. Meanwhile, Casey was also in the crosshairs of Kessler (Sam Worthington), a determined Artificial Intelligence Compliance Enforcement (AICE) agent. Kessler’s job was to track down illegal androids for which he was responsible for creating as part of a mission that he took very personally. Hot on Casey’s trail, he captured another illegal simulant named Esmé (Alicia Sanz). Studying her to figure out the extent of what he was dealing with, their complicated dynamic made for some interesting scenes that put their differing ideologies at play as each looked to evolve over their short time together. Tapping more into that dynamic was one of many missed opportunities to explore any of the themes it presents with any sense of depth. All of the film’s thin subplots and characters inevitably converged into a lackluster and even more nothing climax. Leaving little to no chance to make any kind of emotional connection with any of the characters as a result of a convoluted story, it was hard to care about any of them thus making whatever jumbled arcs they have moot. For the invested, stay for a mid-credits scene.

As mentioned, Simulant somewhat succeeds on a technical level in terms of VFX, cinematography, and production design while the derivative score used to manufacture tension undercut the film at times. What saves the film at the end of the day was its performances, however, there was only so much they can do. While it has too many characters, that’s not the fault of the actors. Amell and Brewster were solid as Evan and Faye but unfortunately bland. Liu and Worthington had marginally more to do with Casey and Kessler and in turn, brought energy to their roles respectively. Casey and Kessler were by far the more interesting of the four therefore one can’t help but want more from them in spite of the fact that they were merely meant to advance the plot of the other two.

Overall, Simulant is not necessarily a bad film but rather just a bland film that fails to stand out in any way or add anything to the discourse. Nevertheless, genre fans should find enough here.

still courtesy of Mongrel Media

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Keith Noakes

The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.