This disturbingly real-looking artificial intelligence sci-fi was made a couple of years ago on what looks like a budget of small change tipped out of the film-makers’ coin jars. It’s getting a release now presumably on account of AI anxiety creeping up the league table of things that keep people awake at night. Like the Nosedive episode of Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, the premise here is that in an apparently-near future people wear contact lenses that feed them information about the world. (Actually, the film is an extended version of a short made by its directors Daniel Lazo and Eran May-Raz back in 2012.)
Andrew Riddell plays Patrick, who like everyone else wears dazzling blue contact lenses that fill the air around him with holograms. Patrick is an agoraphobic who hasn’t left his apartment for over a month; he spends his time playing computer games, going hammer and tongs with 3D zombies. Saviour comes in the form of an app, Refresh, that promises to turn Patrick’s life around. And it delivers, starting with a spring clean of his apartment. The app turns dull chores into computer games; picking laundry off the floor becomes a basketball game – slam dunk the shirt into the basket, and so get a little dopamine hit. Refresh chooses Patrick a new wardrobe of clothes (ordered to arrive by drone in 30 minutes). Things begin to get sinister when it feeds him lines to speak in social interactions, like making small talk with a barber.
Newly equipped with soft skills that make him more likable and at ease with himself, Patrick bags a date with his high school crush Emily (Nova Gaver). Creepily, the app – like a cross between ChatGPT and Cyrano de Bergerac – woos Emily by proxy. Some of the acting might be patchy in places and the drama goes nowhere particularly interesting. But like good sci-fi, the film’s almost-now world feels unsettlingly close, a cautionary tale from the not-so-distant future.
• Sight Extended is released on 12 June on digital platforms.
