Film Review – Replicas (2018)

Starring Keanu Reeves (The John Wick Franchise, The Matrix), Alice Eve (Star Trek: Into Darkness), Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley) and John Ortiz (Kong: Skull Island). Directed by Jeffery Nachmanoff (The Day After Tomorrow) and produced by Stephen Hamel (Passengers), Lorenzo di Bonaventura (Constantine, Transformers), Keanu Reeves, Luis Riefkohl and Mark Gao.

Synopsis


At a medical research facility in Puerto Rico, daring neuroscientist Will Foster (Keanu Reeves) is on the verge of successfully transferring human consciousness into a robot when his family is tragically killed in a car crash. Not wanting to say goodbye to his wife (Alice Eve) and three children, Will recruits his colleague Ed (Thomas Middleditch) on an audacious mission to preserve their minds and transfer them into secretly-grown clone bodies…

Soon discovering that playing God has its downsides, Will battles against the clock and the physical laws of science themselves to resurrect his loving family. When success appears to be within reach, Will finds himself pitted against a sinister government-controlled laboratory and a shady police task force who will stop at nothing to find the key to the incredible scientific breakthrough…

Offering a fresh take on the Frankenstein myth, Replicas is a taut and action-packed sci-fi thriller about family, loss and the dangerous questions surrounding emerging scientific technologies.

Review – Contains Spoilers


The film starts with Will Foster trying to transfer the consciousness of a recently deceased soldier into a robot, but when the soldier is revived he can not deal with being inside a robot and rips his robotic face off!

Dishearten and confused as to why the process will not work Will goes home to his wife and children to prepare for a weekend away, and as they set off in torrential rain, with a few near misses on the road through poor visibility, it becomes quite clear that the at least one member of the family if not all are going to die on this road!

And they do, they come off the road and straight into a lake, with Will being the only survivor. We watch as he painstakingly pulls each member of his family out of the car and the lake and lay them to rest on the bank. But then, rather than call the emergency services, he phones his work colleague, Ed, and the pair of them set off down a very dark path.

The film follows Will try and grow his new family whilst keeping his job and grieving after the decision he was forced to make, to be unable to regrow one of his children. That was hard to watch, and not only does he not regrow his child, but he then wipes all trace of her from everyone’s memory!

And whilst we are watching his family settle into their old consciousness which has its own issues, the film takes a dark turn into what the company is really about, and how they have known all along what Will has been up to, and the family must not be allowed to survive!

I’m not sure the whole Company knowing and trying to kill the family off work for me. I’m not sure what would, and whilst this isn’t a bad film, it’s not great either.

That being said, I did come away from this film thinking it was good, but maybe not one of Keanu’s better movies! Maybe he should stick to action movies as playing the scientific middle-aged dad just didn’t work.

Rachael Jess


Sc-fi, Drama | USA, 2018 | 12 | Blu-Ray, DVD 29th April 2019 , Digital HD 22nd April 2019 (UK)| Lionsgate Films UK | Dir.Jeffrey Nachmanoff | Keanu Reeves, Alice Eve, Emily Alyn Lind, Thomas Middleditch, John Ortiz


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