Archive (2021)

Fans of Duncan Jones' stunning sci-fi masterpiece Moon (2009), or Alex Garland's spectacular Ex Machina (2014) will feel in eerily familiar surroundings here, as Theo James (a million miles away from that heap of turd The Inbetweeners Movie) is holed up in a secret research facility in Japan, working on solving some technological issues with the plant itself. However, we discover his main motivation for being there is so he can work on building an android version of his wife. After making two prototypes, J1 and J2, we realise he is almost finished with J3, which it seems will be the humanoid AI he has been aiming for. Suffice to say, it's not all quite as simple as that, the company James' character is working for learn what he is up to, and things go slightly askew. Gavin Rothery has made a sleek and impressive debut feature here, he was heavily involved in the visual style of Duncan Jones' Moon, and you can clearly see that influence, and that is in no way a criticism. I watched it with a friend and we disagreed over the ending, he didn't like it at all and I thought it neatly tied up all before it, and the film did enough to back up what followed. Rothery sets himself up to be a name to look out for, his is a visual flair that compliments his stories quite superbly, and with this assured debut, proves it is not all style over substance. 7.1/10