With the exponential proliferation of smart devices and artificial intelligence, there’s an incisive story to tell about the ominous possibilities of relying too comprehensively on A.I. in our day-to-day lives. T.I.M. is not that story. Just as it introduces a sense of foreboding at the prospect of trusting every facet of one’s home life to a machine, that machine goes full HAL 9000 meets Fatal Attraction, and the film devolves into a periodically tense but conceptually dull flick about a malevolent stalker robot.
Spencer Brown’s debut feature also suffers from redundancy in the wake M3GAN a year ago. That killer bot movie offered more dynamic storytelling while successfully playing up its campy side. M3GAN doesn’t include any attempts at sweeping statements about A.I., but rather serves as a compelling popcorn thriller. In contrast, the filmmakers take T.I.M. far too seriously, when some camp really could’ve punched up a picture that’s made well enough on a technical level but languishes greatly on a derivative conceptual level.
Much like M3GAN, T.I.M. revolves around an accomplished tech professional in the field of A.I. design, here a U.K.-based robotic prosthetics specialist named Abi (Georgina Campbell) who’s brought in to improve a mechanical hand. She has recently relocated to a fully equipped smart-home provided by her employer, a company on the verge of releasing an android assistant named T.I.M. (Eamon Farren) who can link himself with all of the home’s features to control every aspect of it and even send emails and make purchases on behalf of its users. While it takes a little time for Abi to feel comfortable around her humanoid assistant—which her boss warns is not optional—her husband, Paul (Mark Rowley), is openly suspicious of T.I.M. from the start. His suspicions turn out to be warranted, as the robot assistant learns about love from watching an old black-and-white movie with Abi and proceeds to grow increasingly attached to her.
We discover that Paul has a history of infidelity, and Abi’s trust in him is tenuous at best. Complicated by the attention of the friendly neighbor Rose (Amara Karan), the tension and distrust between Abi and Paul compounds further as T.I.M. begins manipulating the situation to make Paul appear to engage in an affair. These moments offer the flimsiest of socio-technological commentary, as the implicit peril of deep fake technology is rendered explicit here. But Brown and co-writer Sarah Govett’s script shows little interest in exploring these ideas, and instead only finds ways to make T.I.M. more cartoonishly sinister. The actors do their best with what they are given. Farren stands out in particular with a surge of malice brimming beneath T.I.M.’s cold, flat affect.
T.I.M. falters most in its handling of the robot’s desire to be loved. Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence provided the gold standard for such a theme, and here it feels as though this aspect is merely tacked on as a gimmick. There’s little justification for T.I.M.’s obsession with Abi or why he would shift from his programmed intent to murderous villainy so quickly and entirely. In an era when A.I. threatens the livelihoods of artists and other creatives, T.I.M. illustrates how the tendency toward derivative storytelling still remains a very human characteristic.
Photo courtesy of Brainstorm Media
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