Prototype – Movie Review
87 Minutes, Not Rated
Written by Sam Gurney
Directed by Jack Peter Mundy
Synopsis:
In the near future, life-like androids with artificial intelligence have been created to help people with menial household tasks. The prototype, One, created by Roger Marshall and tested by his family, proves to be popular but flawed. Roger has been working on a new model, Two, whose improved features show promise of its super-human abilities. As tensions rise between Roger and wife Shelley, the androids malfunction and the lives of the whole family are soon in danger of Two’s sinister plans.
This is a pretty typical story concerning the evils of Artificial Intelligence: humans program them, and humans, as we are all keenly aware, are fallible creatures.
In Prototype, after a disastrous test of “Zero,” the first-generation android, “One” lives with lead developer Roger and his family, including his put-upon (to put it mildly) wife and two children, one a rebellious teen boy and a younger girl.
Roger, for lack of a better term, is an ass-hat. Verbally (and physically) abusive towards his family, he introduces “Two,” the newest prototype into the household, and things devolve quickly, as Two jockeys to get One taken away as obsolete and unreliable, while making itself (herself, after Roger gives Two a female voice to further demean his wife) indispensable to him.
Shelley tries to keep the household afloat, and One attempts to remain the youngest child’s reliable companion, but Two’s intentions match no one’s, not even Roger’s.
You can guess how this turns out if you’ve seen any other A.I. films in your life.
Also, Prototype feels (and looks, in terms of makeup effects on the androids) like a film called The Alpha Test (see our review HERE) from 2020, and I originally thought there may have been some writer or director bleed-over between films, but there is none, so I guess it’s just a case of “the masks were available.”
Overall, it’s not a terrible movie, though again, we’ve seen it before. I think I prefer the character/android development from The Alpha Test over Prototype, however.
Prototype is now available digitally from Left Films and stars Danielle Scott, Stephanie Lodge, Andrew Rolfe, Jamie Robertson, Tom Taplin, and Zoe Purdy.
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tags: movies, movie review, Prototype, sci-fi, science fiction, android, artificial intelligence, abuse, Danielle Scott, Stephanie Lodge, Andrew Rolfe, Jamie Robertson, Tom Taplin, Zoe Purdy, Jack Peter Mundy,Sam Gurney, left films