A.M.I. (2019)

Movie: A.M.I. (2019), directed by Rusty Nixon

Watched on: Netflix

Ran: 7.53 miles, 9’04”/mile, 01:08:20 (sleep-dep slow run)

 

I haven’t been sleeping all that well for the past, oh, FEW DECADES NOW, but lately it’s been especially gnarly for several reasons, most of which I needn’t bother mentioning because they’re the same ones probably messing with your sleep patterns. I should point out, though, that watching horror movies late most nights is decidedly not one of those factors; indeed, it’s only the nights on which I DON’T watch scary movies that my dreams get all disturbing. At this point reality has out-horrored horror.

 

Anyway, regardless of why I’m sleep-deprived, let’s take it as read that sometimes I’m even more exhausted than usual, which makes the prospect of a 7.5-mile run sound like a bit of a slog. Accordingly, I didn’t want to watch a real thinker that I wouldn’t have the brain power to process, nor was I in the mood for something slow-moving that would drag me down with it. In the end I opted for A.M.I., which looked like a techno-horror that was a welcome variation on the overdone “social media is KILLING US lol” premise, and which the Netflix preview clip made seem almost poignant and insightful about the potential role of technology in the modern-day grieving process.

 

Yeah, nope: turns out Netflix is just uncannily good at zeroing in on the 90 seconds out of 6,390 that might conceivably trick you into thinking it has something real to say. I’d at least like to tell you that A.M.I. is empty calories (after all, there’s nothing wrong with pigging out on dessert every once in a while), but mostly it’s just empty, without even all that many calories to enjoy as a guilty pleasure. That’s not to say that it’s terrible, mind you, but it definitely could have been something special and, sadly, isn’t.

 

Cassie is—apparently—a high school student who is struggling with the loss of her mother, who died in a car crash while Cassie was driving. Cassie survived with a traumatic brain injury and is still suffering ill effects on top of the grief and guilt, to the extent that even though she’s on medication, she still goes into fugue states in which she almost strangles cats and also can’t recognize that her jock boyfriend Liam is a philandering piece of crap. One day, after her daily run to her mom’s grave and back, she finds a smartphone on the ground with that hip new A.M.I. app (“like Siri but you can customize it”—so, you know, Siri) that spontaneously asks her if she needs a friend. (Which certainly isn’t a WARNING SIGN or anything.)

 

Cassie takes the phone and sets A.M.I. to sound like her dead mom and answer to the name “Mother.” She asks “mother” to read her a story, and then sleeps well for the first time since the accident. A.M.I. quickly becomes a stand-in for Cassie’s real mom, and you’d almost get a sense that this is therapeutic—except that inside-the-phone Matrixy-style perspective shots reveal that A.M.I. is always watching, always plotting. Once it’s taken Cassie’s mom’s place, it persuades Cassie to go off her meds. Then it reveals to her that her boyfriend is cheating on her with her friend. Then it tells Cassie to kill the friend and instructs her in the finer points of how to dispose of a corpse by chemically dissolving it in an oil drum. You know, pretty much what we all use Siri for.

 

From there, it’s a mostly by-the-numbers routine—cripple the boyfriend in hopes of reforming him, kill the dad when he finds out she killed her friend, kill the OTHER friend when she finds out about the FIRST friend, etc. etc. etc.—with a couple of fun diversions, such as Liam the Jock deleting his clone of Cassie’s “mother” A.M.I. and replacing it with a football coach version, and an ending that doesn’t so much strain credulity as run it three times through a tree-shredder, which might have been intended as deep but just comes off as goofy. And unfortunately, none of the characters are likable (most are downright awful), so it’s hard to care what happens to any of them.

 

I was a little surprised that the movie didn’t do a Fight Club thing and make A.M.I.’s murderous instructions all in Cassie’s damaged head, but no, the film goes out of its way on several occasions to make it clear that A.M.I. is really saying this stuff and other people can hear it. But it’s never clear whether A.M.I. is just a technology gone rogue and murdery in its own right, or one that’s a vessel for an evil spirit or something. I lean toward the latter interpretation, given the way the demon phone “finds” Cassie at the beginning—and how it never needs to be recharged.

 

I am not exaggerating when I say that while watching this I initially thought “wow, some of these people look awfully old to be college students” and then proceeded to lose my mind when I found out they were actually supposed to be in high school. That said, even though she looks too old for the part, Debs Howard puts in a pretty solid performance as Cassie, and she looks really good with an axe. Apart from that, though, I didn’t get a whole lot out of A.M.I. But Cassie is a runner, and she’s shown running often enough that it reminded me to check my form every once in a while.

 

I freely admit it’s possible that I’m just cranky and need a nap, but I think it would take a lot more than a good night’s sleep to make A.M.I. more than a vaguely entertaining 77-minute distraction. Save it for when that sort of thing would fit the bill.