AIMEE: The Visitor

The movie touches on the drawbacks of AI as the main character who is a hacker by trade becomes drawn to one. He is a shut-in and spends all his time indoors playing video games. A handsome enough guy - and attracts/gets involved with a female friend who does work for him part time. Aimee is the AI who gradually infiltrates his life and begins to turn things upside-down. Ultimately, human ingenuity needs to trump technical know-how in order for the characters to survive. I appreciated that the main character was flawed and kind of a douche. He is not a victim; he brought it onto himself. The movie has a retro visual style reminiscent of the Troma movies of the 1980's. A fun movie for a Friday or Saturday night w/ friends.

AIMEE: THE VISITOR is certainly a film that has more originality than most Full Moon productions, although unfortunately that doesn't translate into quality. What we have here is a thriller-style story about one man's relationship with an AI character on his computer. I suppose the selling point is that this is the first film to have a fully AI supporting character, although truth be told it merely regurgitates a lot of the familiar tropes about computers, AI and the dangers inherent in both. Structually it's the same as a lot of Full Moon's recent hour-long productions, with a bit of cheesiness and some sex thrown in; the acting is adequate but the end result somehow less than the some of its parts.

OK, so I thought that perhaps this film would be reminiscent of some of those campy-technology based sci-fi films of the 80s & 90s, i.e., Johnny Mnemonic, Hackers, War Games, The Thirteenth Floor, to name a few. You know, those movies that were based on technology of the era that may have been decent movies at the time but are completely obsolete now and almost comical to watch.

This movie does not have to wait 30 years to be comical to watch. I could see this movie getting a B+ as a student film for a course at a Poughkeepsie, New York community college called "You can make movies too."

The only thing I liked about this movie was that the girl who played Gazelle was kind of cute. She had a rather Halston Sage kind a look. But unfortunately, her acting, although at times somewhat convincing, mostly missed the mark, as did the other actors' performances. I thought perhaps two of her 30 or so "What the f's?" were actually believable.

The scene where the two "FBI agents," (whose appearance in the film was completely irrelevant), were electrocuted, was reminiscent of Star Trek TOS 1966 special effects.

Ironically, the best actor in the cast was the artificial intelligence that played the character called AIMEE.

Here's the good news: if somebody forces you to watch this movie, it's only 69 minutes long!

I'm going to say this is one of the better recent movies to delve into this topic. The human characters stayed with me for awhile afterwards. You've got a shut-in Hacker, self-absorbed narcisist. That's our main character (flawed, which I like). He has two friends that he subcontracts to do his bidding. Then he loads and opens some trial software that brings a beautiful AI woman into his world (albeit she is only on his OLED display screen). Thus Aimee is born. Human lives become endangered as Aimee becomes more emotionally involved with the lead character. The acting, sets and premise are all good. Faith West is very good and should work more. I recommend this as something different than the Hollywood norm.

I liked the idea of this movie a lot as it ties into current fears the human population has about what role AI will really play in our lives. Will it try to take control over our decision-making? This movie features a protagonist who is a shut-in/hacker who spends all his time inside a dark workspace/home in arrested adolescence. Fair enough. When he downloads new software and discovers an AI assistant named Aimee, that's when the trouble starts. My main beef is that the lead actor lacked charisma and felt slimy to me. Supporting characters were better played. I appreciated the cool retro 1980's look to the lighting and set design. Run time is confusing, only 76 minutes? Felt like they could've added 6-7 more minutes to get to proper length. It is worth checking out.