Abe

It is a sketch. A good one because its only purpose can be propose an idea , a simple and precise one about near future.

A robot preserving memories about the family who it served. And using the rejection as premise for discover the love. In its manner. The film is so well crafted , the story - just touching to creepy, the voice of Abe - perfect and the temptation to see it as a sort of parable - far to be small.

A beautiful short film , at the border of Sci Fi and horror.

The scene is quickly set: an attractive young woman wakes up restrained in a secluded area, and sees a collection of operating knives. Then someone approaches, and it turns out not to be a fellow person, but... a humanoid robot. He starts talking, and the terrifying truth becomes clear to us.

I won't give away more. While the backstory isn't original, this is without a doubt the most compelling representation in this medium. The 8 and a half minutes running time flies by with no lulls. This goes into themes that would make Asimov proud: are robots equivalent to people? At what point does building and programming them as servants become a civil rights issue? And this adds a rarer, chilling point: what will be the consequences of this, arguably, slavery?

The acting is excellent. If any one performance carries this, it is without a doubt that of Abe, the former butler-bot, or botler, if you will. It effortlessly strikes the difficult balance between a sparse, detached tone and a more affected one. Never letting us forget that this is a creation, not something... someone? who was born, and yet with the ever-present quality of emotion, drive, a past that has left an imprint.

FX are flawless, our titular mechanical endo-skeleton always feels like you could reach out and touch him. And they show the necessary restraint, with such graphic tools at their disposal - at no point is this flashy. The design is simultaneously creepy and vulnerable, and you could see this/him in a normal home, with a mix of the utilitarian and the "familiar".

There is disturbing content(as an underlying sense throughout the entire production)and blood in this. I recommend this to any fan of Asimov. 8/10

A familiar scene to horror viewers – a victim wakes up chained to a bed in a dark place, surrounded by plastic sheeting. Her captor comes in and delivers a monologue to her while toying with the knives which lay close by. It is nothing particularly new as a thing however in the case of Abe the lead character is a robot rather than a human. In the monologue we hear of his programming to love and his desire to achieve love back but at the same time he is frustrated because maybe he is not worthy of it, maybe he has no soul as others do but at the end of the day he is yet to find consistent love and the fault not being with him must be with others.

Sometimes with short films you get the feeling that the maker is only interested in his piece in so far as it serves him or her; so rather than the film being made because the medium of short film is the perfect way to tell the story, it is done as a calling-card or pitch to try to get a bigger project off the ground. In theory I understand this and don't mind watching these but generally it must be said that the films that take this approach are generally not as good as those that set out to deliver from the get-go. This unfortunately is the case with Abe because it works better as a suggestion than as a whole; in fact if the structure feels like anything it feels like a pilot for a series because we get the introduction, we get interest in the character and we get the continuation as the conclusion. On this level it works and I enjoyed the genre style of the delivery and the writing, but only when viewed as a pilot.

Watching it as a standalone you wonder why it didn't try to do more and why all aspects of it seem to be pointing to something else. Take away the goal and the animation and you have a serial killer scene the type of which Dexter has done for many years and not too much is added to enhance it as a genre scene. The sci-fi element makes it interesting and the monologue from Abe is good so it is enjoyable in that sense, just frustrating to have it be so specific and then open into nothing. Animation is very good though and Abe mostly blends well with the real world.

Abe is a character I would have liked to see more of and I do think that this short could have been a pitch and a complete short with a more satisfying conclusion and delivery. It still works on its strengths but it feels like a pitch or a pilot and as such has weaknesses inherent in the approach; it is good I wanted to see more, just a shame that as a result the short feels like it fell short of what it should have achieved.

Take the robot from I, Robot (2004) then make a 7 minute short combining concepts from Bicentennial Man (1999) and a torture porn movie and you have Abe.

It's a quaint little short that looks fantastic and clearly had money behind it. The trouble is that there is no story here, merely a concept. This would have been a great method of pitching an idea to a studio, but as a short it falls somewhat short. (Pun intended)

It tells the tale of a robot that once served a family, but after losing their love he proceeds to try and "fix" people believing them broken and does it in a less than pleasant manner.

The script is great and in some sick twisted way you can totally empathise, for that reason I actually found myself more than a little saddened by the premise but doubly so when I realised there wasn't going to be an actual story here.

Sure shorts have limitations imposed on them due to the length but they can still have a beginning/middle/end and this doesn't.

Someone pick this concept up and make a feature film out of it!

The Good:

Looks great

Well written

Excellent premise

The Bad:

No real structure

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

This furthers my stance on robots and my stance is NO

This would make a wicked twist for a Bicentennial Man 2

It's all set out there. A robot who loves but gets none in return, turns to trying to "fix" those that don't love him. Unfortunately, he is a machine and has no expertise in handling human bodies. He is soft spoken. He covers the mouth of the young woman so she is not able to respond in any way. It is a brutal little film.