Film Review: Uncanny (2015)

SYNOPSIS:

An incredibly life-like robot named Adam (that looks just like any other human) begins to act more and more bizarre once the scientist that invented him becomes romantically involved with a reporter that is doing a story on them.

REVIEW:

To be honest robots scare the living hell out of me. I don’t know why this is, but as long as I can remember something about them has terrified me beyond belief (which is why I think that Deadly Friend is one of the scariest movies of all time due to my phobia). I thought that Uncanny sounded pretty cool and went into it expecting it to really freak me out due to the fact that it is all about a robot that seems to go haywire and starts doing all sorts of weird and creepy things after its inventor falls in love. Unfortunately that is not quite what we get and instead of what could have been an awesome killer robot movie we end up with a boring, yawn-inducing science fiction/drama that really has no elements of horror whatsoever. To say that I was utterly disappointed and underwhelmed by it would be an understatement and even though the acting was top-notch for the most part I just couldn’t get into it no matter how hard I tried.

The biggest downfall of the movie in my opinion is the fact that it moves way too slow. It plods along at a snail’s pace (and I’m being generous here) and I had a lot of trouble paying attention to what was going on as a result. Absolutely nothing worth mentioning happens for the first 45 minutes to an hour into the film and we are subjected to many snooze-worthy scenes that quite honestly nearly put me to sleep countless times. There was a point where I came very close to just taking it out of my DVD player and putting it back on the shelf before I finished it completely but somehow I was able to all the way through to the very end. I realize that it is more of a character-driven piece than anything else but at the same time I was expecting at least something halfway interesting and exciting to happen sooner or later but it never quite happened. We get very few scenes where something that held my attention for more than a few seconds occurred but those moments were way too few and far between. Even the big thing that happens toward the end bored me to tears and was nothing to really write home about. In a lot of ways I think that it tries way too hard to be deep and intelligent and if you ask me it hurt the overall quality of the film more than anything.

I also wasn’t too keen on the big twist toward the end either. If you pay at least a little bit of attention you will be able to figure it out early on and I just didn’t think that it was anything that special or earth-shattering like the people behind it intended it to be. I’ll give them credit for at least trying but I thought that it sort of fell flat in every possible way and just didn’t quite work. It felt pretty forced to me and I really don’t think that it is really worth sitting through the rest of the movie for as it is quite predictable and underwhelming. I actually called it early on in the movie so I wasn’t the least bit surprised when it revealed late into the film. I think that I was supposed to be shocked by the revelation but I wasn’t and I think that a lot of other viewers that watch it will feel the exact same way that I did about it. That may just be me being arrogant in a lot of ways since I have seen so many movies during my lifetime that it is hard to take me by surprise anymore but with all due respect I thought that the twist this time around was pretty weak and lacked the punch that the filmmakers thought that it would have.

On the other hand I’ll admit that the acting is actually quite good. Mark Webber does a fine job as the super genius David and even though the character is your typical oddball scientist type his performance worked. Lucy Griffiths is also great as Joy, the reporter that David develops feelings for as the movie progresses. It is because of her that David’s creation starts to act weird (he becomes jealous of her relationship with David) and I thought that she turned in a very good performance in the role. The scene stealer from the entire movie though was without a doubt David Clayton Rogers as Adam. He does an exceptional job throughout the movie and there are times that you actually believe that he may be some sort of artificial life form (and I mean that in the best possible way). I think that he carried the movie for the most part and I think that in a lot of ways he was just too good for this movie. Rainn Wilson pops up a couple of times but to be honest he really doesn’t get that much screen time so it was really hard to say if he did a good job as usual as not. To me it seemed as though he wanted very much to be somewhere else (perhaps on the set of a better movie) when he does show up and I really can’t say that I blame him as he his talents seemed to be a little wasted here.

Uncanny just wasn’t for me. That isn’t to say that other viewers won’t love it but in my opinion I just wasn’t the right audience for it as in general I am not really that into science fiction films. I wasn’t exactly what I thought that it was going to be as I assumed it was going to be more horror-oriented than it was and I was turned off by this fact. While I didn’t enjoy it don’t let that stop you from seeing it and forming your own opinion about it. If you are more into the science fiction side of things when it comes to movies you may actually enjoy it, so check it out if it sounds like it may be your cup of tea. Unfortunately it just wasn’t mine.