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Film: AIMEE: The Visitor
Year: 2023
Director: Charles Band
Writer: Neal Marshall Stevens
Starring: Dallas Schaefer, Faith West and Felix Merback
Review:
This is a screener that was sent to me via Athena from Scandal Co-Active. The selling point here is that this is featuring the first AI-Created actor. Upon reading this and seeing that this is a Full Moon Film, I’m not shocked. Charles Band, who directed this, has been a pioneer with different things in the low budget cinema realm. As a fan of Full Moon growing up, I was intrigued to check this out.
Synopsis: A group of hackers stumble upon an advanced artificial intelligence program named AIMEE. It is the narcissistic and megalomaniac program’s goal is to seduce and destroy her human proxy.
We start this off seeing a building from the outside. It turns out to be your typical lair for hackers. Scott Keyes (Dallas Scahefer) owns the place and we meet him as he’s watching porn. A sibling duo, Hunter (Felix Merback) and Gazelle (Faith West), work with him on projects. They sneak in and surprise him, which annoys Keyes. They do have good news though. The duo was able to hack into Black Strand Alpha and have a drive for Keyes.
Keyes breaks the encryption and it turns out to be AIMEE. This is an acronym with the first two letters being artificial intelligence. Keyes is intrigued. AIMEE analyzes his system and provides him personalized to his taste porn. He also uses her help with hacking jobs. It seems to make everything that much easier for him.
There is a bit here where two men in black suits show up, Tom Dacey Carr and Joe Kurak. They are from the government and there to monitor what AIMEE does. Part of it is to isolate her on this network. She takes care of them before they can limit her.
Another aspect is Gazelle has a crush on Keyes. He is mean to her, but that doesn’t change it. She is worried about what they gave him. Hunter and she do not know at first that it is an AI program. It does tap into their network and watch them. When they figure it out, Gazelle wants to figure out more about this where Keyes doesn’t seem to care.
As the synopsis said, AIMEE becomes jealous. She will do what she must to keep people from getting between her and Keyes. We are just seeing the tip of what she is capable of as well.
That is where I’ll leave my recap and introduction to the characters. Where I want to start is that I was pleasantly surprised by this movie. I feel bad saying this since I was fond of Full Moon growing up, but their output has dipped considerably from their heyday. They are big on sequels and throwing together things cheaply to make money. It works for them so I’m not going to come down too hard. I just been wanting more from them. I do think that we are getting closer to the old Full Moon here.
Let me go into why. The first thing is that I love this contained story. We have a group of hackers who live and work in this a building that is generic for people like this. I love that the men in black comment on it and they’re right. If you don’t know what you’re looking for, then you’d never know, which is true. I’m a fan of hackers in movies as it is something I wish I could do. They don’t go too much in this aspect, but we get enough where it feels real. This is set up in a believable way.
Now let me get to focus, AIMEE. This is something I’ll also give credit to since AI is a focus in the world. This isn’t a new fear. We’ve had things like Terminator or 2001: A Space Odyssey dealing with the dangers of AI. What is interesting here though is that Band has a commentary in that the character of AIMEE is completely AI generated. The voice and look. It is animated if you didn’t know. You can tell that it’s not a real person. Fitting that at the time of writing this, with the writers/actors’ strike and how AI could potentially be the replacement, Full Moon would make a movie with an AI created actor in a movie talking about the dangers of AI. That is a meta-approach for sure. I do have to say, how AIMEE is used works.
To then finish out the story, the surrounding aspects are solid. I think part of this is to flesh out Keyes and Gazelle in ways that are good enough. We know that Keyes is addicted to porn. He’s never been in a relationship and he is set in his ways. I also think that does what he wants which a partner doesn’t normally allow. Not saying your partner controls your life, but it is a one-sided relationship that Keyes wants. Gazelle on the other hand has a crush on him. She cares about him. She continues to investigate this program to help him, even if he doesn’t know the extent of what she does. I like this subplot and how it evolves with the story.
That should be enough of the story so over to the acting. I thought that Schaefer was good as this jerk hacker. It is fitting that the synopsis calls AIMEE a megalomanic and narcissistic. I’d say these terms also fit Keyes. Schaefer does well in bringing this character to life. He is aloof to things and it comes back to bite him. I liked West as well. She’s up there with Schaefer as the two best performers. I could tell she had a thing for Keyes and I liked where they took that. We also see her topless if you’re interested. Merback is fine as a supporting character. We had limited performances by Carr and Kurak that were fine. I’d also credit the AI that brought AIMEE to life. It has limited performance but works to bring this computer personality.
All that is left then is filmmaking. The cinematography is fine. There was something with an opening shot that was distorted and I didn’t know if that was intentional. It didn’t ruin things though either. I like the setting of this seemingly abandoned building. It suits these to live there. There is bad CGI here. We don’t get a lot of it so it doesn’t ruin it. The AI generated AIMEE is fun with the variations they do of her. Reminds me of the images and filters of people that flooded social media for a while. We only got a few kills and I wanted more there. Other than that, the soundtrack fit what was needed.
In conclusion, I’ll reiterate that I was pleasantly surprised here. This is a socially relevant film about the dangers of AI while having a computer-generated character as one of the focal. I’ll credit Band for doing something like this. I do like the story here. It is simple while having depth to two of our main characters. This is made well enough. No issues there aside from a couple spots of bad CGI. This is one of the better newer Full Moon films I’ve seen. If you’re a fan of this company, I’d recommend checking this out. Not a great movie, but an interesting watch.
My Rating: 7 out of 10