The inside baseball of Soulm8te‘s release spelled doom from the start. Zero marketing before the initial release date; yanked from the calendar with no warning; deemed unworthy for theaters; a streaming release with no pre-screenings for critics. The movie that was supposed to expand the M3GANVERSE died a nobody’s death before anyone had a chance to see it … which doesn’t always mean the movie is terrible. Business is business; suits run Hollywood, and sometimes they don’t know what they have, or make calculated financial decisions. Unfortunately for Soulm8te, even with sunken hopes and slashed expectations, Kate Dolan’s AI-companion thriller still managed to underwhelm.
Fargo and Alien: Earth star David Rysdahl stars as David Wasson, a grieving engineer who works for Canta Robotics, a recent purchase by new parent company, Ultima Robotix. David’s new supervisor, Ben (Arty Froushan), reveals Canta was selected for its work in reinforcement learning within safeguards, which they want implemented in their new line of at-home companion robots, the SOULM8TE. David becomes a beta tester after growing fond of his Ulti-M8te chatbot, which he names Sara. His SOULM8TE downloads Sara, bringing her to life (as Evil Dead Rise‘s Lily Sullivan). But when David starts tinkering with her code to lessen restrictions, hoping for a more human experience, he puts himself—and his flirtatious colleague Aubrey (Claudia Doumit)—in grave peril.
The first problem here is Soulm8te‘s cowardice in stymying Lily Sullivan at every turn. We all (er, some of us) saw M3GAN 2.0. This franchise has the potential to go bonkers. And yet, Soulm8te plays angsty and romance novel-y in a dull way that restricts Sullivan’s antics. Every scene is begging for more obscurity from Sara, who’s been overloaded with Bravo TV-esque reality clips and brainheaded relationship influencer jargon. Soulm8te is a movie that should have gone off the rails, and yet it reads like Nicholas Sparks meets Sam Altman on melatonin. Sara’s fixation on David is rote, expected, and uninteresting. As far as fantastical computer-bred romances go, writers Rafael Jordan and Dolan barely scratch the surface of intrigue.
More frustratingly, and I hate to call out a single actor, but David Rysdahl is horrendously miscast as the lead romantic interest in not only a supercomputer algorithm, but a real human who desires substantial connection. David’s arc is heartbreaking: the tech whiz who loses a wife and hides away in his dingy apartment, taking advantage of remote work protocols. But there’s zero establishing development to show why Aubrey would desire David, which only seems stranger when Sara fights with Aubrey over David. Mr. Rysdahl struggles to convey the down-and-out charms that might enrapture vulnerable women, making Soulm8te this head-scratching erotic thriller that’s light on eroticism and thrills. Rysdahl fills a role, but he doesn’t sell the scenario, and I feel so bad typing that, but he’s not a Jack Quaid type who could exude both nerdy awkwardness and delectable charms.
As for the horrors of Soulm8te, perhaps Blumhouse thought the M3GAN universe could be this teenage cash cow, because Dolan doesn’t get the opportunity to indulge in Sara’s unprotected defenses. A broken wrist here, a crushed penis there, I get it. Soulm8te lives and dies on a few choice gore scenes, none of which are shown in exceptional gratuity. They exist, and bad men are punished rightfully by Sullivan’s automaton, and yet there’s nothing dignifying about the violence. The whole Obsession comparison of it all exists, since Sara’s pre-programming of toxic online culture shapes her vision of a perfect relationship, but the film’s execution of why that goes awfully is muted. The whys of Soulm8te pose fantastic questions—how clickbait dating influencers poison the culture, why anyone listens to bloggers who whine on camera—and yet the results are so flat. Dolan’s points are well-intended, yet execution falls off a cliff.
In speaking to the Obsession comparison, truthfully, that’s more relevant than any Companion backlash. I was worried that Soulm8te would be unfavorably put side-by-side with Companion, and while similarities exist, the narrative stays far enough away. That said, Companion absolutely digs deeper into the AI-robot relationship of it all, where Soulm8te gets stuck in the ho-hum Wine Aunt fetishization of love that peters out like a cheap André buzz. Sullivan has a wee bit of fun as Susie Homemaker, defying David’s orders and leaving the house to purchase cookie ingredients, but the premise is only pushed so far. There’s a tremendous amount of wasted potential in terms of storytelling, which is in line with how one-note and underachieving the entire product reveals itself to be.
Soulm8te is as bad as its path to audiences predicts. You hate to see it, but yikes, this techno-panic love letter to better AI freakouts is without a backbone. Points for Lily Sullivan doing what she can, and points for the sole hilarious joke about how dumb the film’s title is, but otherwise, this movie makes M3GAN 2.0 look like The Godfather II (or REC 2 for horror fans). And with that, the M3GANVERSE vanishes like the past two iterations of the Dark Universe, never to be heard from until a better premise makes us forget what Soulm8te could have been.
Movie Score: 2/5