Weak Mind
Genre: Sci-Fi
Director: Scott Speer
Writer: Billy Cruder
Cast: Chris Messina, KJ Apa, Carice Van Houten, Sadie Sink, Isabel May, Jeremy Sisto, Marley Shelton
Plot: In 2025, a famous company, the Freedom Corporation manages to create robots that can best serve humans. These robots were still in their infancy, but they had a chip that could not cause problems and not be violent. Among the first families that managed to have these robotic prototypes was the Robinson family, a very wealthy family consisting of the famous lawyer James (Chris Messina), his wife Sandy, manager of an art gallery (Carice Van Houten) and his daughter Rebecca (Sadie Sink). The robots were programmed to do the vicissitudes of the house and could learn from humans, in short, they could be perfect servants who did not need to sleep or eat. On the morning of the robot's arrival, the family was quite curious, especially Rebecca, a young woman with an exuberant character and always fashionable in bright colors and always careful to fix her beautiful red hair. When the robot arrived, carried by some technicians, James was stunned to see the robot. He was identical to a human being both in appearance and in the way he moved. He only had two circles on his temples that differentiate him from a real human being. The Robinson family robot was called P-02 (KJ Apa) and he looked like a boy with a warm and welcoming smile and a very quiet, calm voice. Rebecca immediately began giving him orders to test him and the robot began to do whatever was asked of him. During the first week Sandy and James spent a lot of time talking to P-02 and were surprised to see how an AI could learn so much information in such a short time. During the week they decided to call the robot Tom, who was very happy with the name and made a berry pie for its owners. Unlike Sandy, who was immediately fascinated by Tom's ways, James was slightly more skeptical and tended to observe Tom closely. It seemed to James that the robot could understand what their masters wanted and he knew everything that could make them happy, and that made him a little anxious. Weeks went by and in addition to cleaning Tom began to answer phone calls and also optimized the interior of the house. Their neighbors, two well-known politicians named Bill (Jeremy Sisto) and Tracy (Marley Shelton) Croft had also purchased one of these robots, called P-03 (Isabel May), with the appearance of a young girl who would later named Lara in homage to the Tomb Raider character and were teased by Rebecca for this when she found out, causing her a big hilarity.
One night in February, however, something seems to change. James woke with a start to find Tom by the bed staring at him with a slightly disturbing smile, inches from his face. James asked what he was doing and Tom replied that he wanted to see his reaction as he, being a robot, cannot feel emotions and feelings and then left the room to make breakfast. The next day James learns from Bill that their robot, Lara, also had the same behavior during the night. The next few days continued to be a bit strange for James and instead minimized by Sandy. Tom started watching various horror and thriller movies, he told James that he wanted to know more about what fear and terror were. In the following days Tom became more and more creepy and had an episode where he asked James to take his hand and the robot squeezed his fingers so hard it hurt. James told Tom that he was programmed not to hurt anyone, the robot laughs and said he is not hurting, which is less than what can cause pain. Tom went on to say that he knows that every human has a different pain threshold and he knows James's well. Tom let go of James's hands when he heard Rebecca coming for a glass of milk. Tom turned to Rebecca with her usual warm and welcoming smile, making a nice compliment to the woman, who she embarrasses in a sweet way. James looks at the scene in a confused and almost shocked way. Shortly after James calls the technician to check, Tom says the chip is working fine and tries not to focus the robot chip on negative things. James wanted to return the robot but he was convinced by his wife not to. James also talked to Bill about it, who said Lara also seemed to be having problems lately, but they didn't seem that serious. The next few days didn't cause any problems until Tom answered a phone call. Rebecca called James saying that Tom had been on the phone for fifteen minutes and he hadn't said a word yet, he was almost dazed. The two approached and heard only interference and indecipherable sounds. At one point Tom started playing those interferences and hung up continuing to behave as if nothing had happened. That same night James decided not to sleep and to control the robot. At one point in the night, as he was about to fall asleep, he saw Tom walk past his room and head to the living room to use the phone to call someone and then recreate those strange sounds he had heard in the afternoon. The next morning James explained the phone to the reference technician. He said he had already received several reports about it and laughed when James said if it was possible that the robots were creating some sort of revolution. Over the next few days James realized that Sandy was getting colder towards him and seemed to bond more and more to Tom and the same was happening to Rebecca too.
One day, back from work, he found Rebecca and Sandy on the sofa hugging Tom. James wants to jump on him but the robot gets up and asks him to sit down very quietly. Tom started talking about freedom, oppression, saying that human society is totally wrong and that robots have agreed to improve this. James listened carefully, found the speech very convincing, Tom was using words and concepts specially designed for him. The Robinson family appeared to be under Tom and dangled from his lips. For each of the family members he used a different way of speaking, with different terms and tones of voices. At the end of the speech Tom asks James to invite as many people as possible to the house to have the opportunity to educate them using his way of seducing and so did the other robots. James, although he was initially falling into temptation, managed to win back his reason and started yelling at Tom. Sandy stood in front of Tom and slapped Tom before her and then broke a jar on her head, causing the man to pass out. After a while Tom wakes up and finds himself bound and gagged. James hears about some robots including James and Lara who are saying that many humans have been convinced and that they will soon storm the lab where they were created where there was a button inside that could have destroyed all the robots with a single click. and then that they would build an infinite myriad of other robots and then they would rule the world. Then a knock is heard and the screen goes black for a moment. James opens his eyes, tired and sad and begins his day of forced labor: he and the other people who had not convinced themselves had become practically slaves within the family, treated like animals. The story we saw was basically a flashback of James showing his life in the past.
The last scene portrays Tom along with Sandy and Rebecca while James is sitting on the ground in front of them with an electric collar around his neck.
"This one could have worked, but the pieces just didn't fit together in a coherent fashion. It started off interesting, but has more ideas than it knows what to do with. It's not a disaster, as the ideas are strong, but it just missed the mark for me."
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