A.M.I.

This is the problem with this film. Hard to take it seriously when the lead actor looks like she should picking her daughter up from highschool not attending one. I keep trying to figure out in the beginning if they were in college or what. Then I find out they're supposed to be in highschool?

A garbage horror movie in every sense. But watch it with friends and it's a riot. It's not as amazing as Niel Breen, but it gets the job done.

Corny phone thrillers are my thing. However, she's only supposed to be 17??!!! She's clearly like 30.

For a B movie I think this film is brightly lit, professionally shot, and moves at a fairly swift pace. The audio wasn't great, I had to turn my sound up to hear the dialogue clearly. The premise is timely, we are all increasingly dependent on our phones and AI is slowly taking over all of our lives. Ok, enough of the compliments, folks.

The dialogue is dumb and very thin. The lead actress, Debs Howard (Cassie) is an attractive woman but looks wayyyy too old to be in high school. Her performance is wooden and that's a problem because she is in virtually every scene and has to carry the movie. We don't get enough story on the her character to really care about her. We don't know learn enough about her illness, her relationship to her mother, her bond to her best friend and alleged boyfriend to really care about how things end up. I wound up cheering more for the creepy boyfriend, Liam, just because he was so over the top in his creepishness.

What we get is the usual revenge fantasy deaths of a bunch of unlikable people. I kept watching out of amusement. How dumb are things going to get? Answer, very dumb. If you are into the one-by-one killing off thing you might find this film entertaining. There are attempts to at humor in some of the death scenes.

The bottom line is that this film is not scary and not deep on any psychological level. It might have been better if they played things totally for laughs, like in the amusing last scene, but taken as a straight horror movie, bleh!

If by chance your phone ever starts telling you to kill people it's time to get a new phone.

Saw 'A.M.I' mainly because the premise was really interesting and sounded very unsettling, one of the better premises for any recent film in my opinion. It was also interesting due to it seeming to raise awareness for the negative effects of obsessive cellphone and technological use, a very much current issue and always worth addressing (should be addressed more actually). It was also a film that actually looked like it wasn't made on the cheap.

Will say that 'A.M.I' does have its good elements and doesn't completely squander its premise, did fear it would having seen a lot of potential wastes recently and getting quite tired of it. Do think though that it could have done much more with it though and that it should have been a much better film than it turned out. What could have been something intriguing and decent, and oh my goodness it could have been that easily, turned out instead to be a valiant semi-failure in my view due to such messy storytelling.

Beginning with the good, 'A.M.I' visually looks as though effort was put into it and it didn't look cheap, some atmospheric style and some clever camera angles here. The editing perhaps could have been tighter, but generally didn't have much of a problem with the film visually. Cassie was a lead character worth rooting for and wasn't a dull obnoxious stereotype that is common with characters in similar films.

Music does unsettle and didn't over-emphasise, or at least it didn't to me. The acting was surprisingly acceptable, with Debs Howard being more than up to the task in the lead role and Veronica Hampson steals her scenes without being annoying.

Other than Cassie though, the characters are somewhat ordinary and more could have been done with them. The script generates little personality, let alone tension, is awkward and with so little explained it came over as vague as well.

It is the story that wrecks 'A.M.I', other than some interesting questions raised and a nice element of sarcasm directed at technological addiction and the younger generation that could have featured more actually, it is a mess. There isn't enough creepiness and the suspense and thrills aren't there, ruined too by some very lazy and easily avoidable errors and too much being under-explored and lacking in sense that it becomes one big muddle.

Concluding, great premise but underwhelming execution of it. 4/10