Mourning the untimely death of his wife Lizzie, software engineer David beta tests Ultima’s new tech’ female companion robot at his home, which quickly spirals out of control.
Back at the beginning of 2023, Blumhouse productions brought us the brilliant film M3GAN which burst onto our screens in the bleak January slate of films and quickly received universal critical praise and a comparatively large box office return. Intelligent writing gave us the story of a young girl going through the mourning of her parents’ death, who then acquires from her brilliant software aunt a companion robot who will take care of her every physical and mental need. The acting from a young Violet McGraw and the lifelike interaction with the sentient doll with its Instagrammable dance skills gave us a film with both horror that had us coming back for more. Fast forward 2 years and M3GAN 2.0 hit our screens after lengthy rewrites, though this time coming up against the summer blockbuster films and a storyline direction that lost its real reason for being: it failed to light the darkness of its very successful and loved previous incarnation.
Now in 2026, we are delivered a more adult film within the ever growing universe from Jason Blum’s team. SOULM8TE is a story of a software engineer David, who is desperately trying to regain his human interaction with Lizzie through limited domestic electronics. Working within the Ultima company, David is offered the chance of companionship with a human style robot; though her coding is initially factory compliant and cold, with David’s software dabbling she soon becomes more lifelike pushing back with her ever changing increasingly humanising interactions.
Starring David Rysdahl (Fargo series) as software engineer David, and Lily Sullivan (Evil Dead Rise) as SARA from the acronym of “Support Accountability Respect Adaptability”, we have our love interest double header of a distraught, mentally fragile man and his hope for some normality through his pluperfect sentient partner. Within this love triangle we also have Claudia Doumit (The Boys) as security analyst Aubrey, cautious and increasingly jealous of the new android woman on the Seattle block. There is however some clever writing as we meet Ultima’s prototype Circe, named after the witch in Greek mythology who turns men to pigs. This name is not a coincidence.
SOULM8TE in itself is a very simple story of love, loss and longing; however in this case it has not been executed with any real depth or panache. Where M3GAN had an independant style that completely rewrote the ‘horror doll’ franchise giving birth to something fresh, SOULM8TE feels as though it is treading on very familiar thin ice. Having said this, this isn’t a bad film lacking style or substance, it has a cinematic execution that has unfortunately been lost through the limited and compressed digital streaming network that despite being 4K through in this case the Apple platform, doesn’t deliver the audio depth and of course large screen feel one gets from the critical worldwide cinematic release. Lily Sullivan is the star here and does produce a highly realistic robot-like quality of body movements; including the tricky non blinking and the turning of the head before the body when changing her direction. Sadly this however is not enough to lift a story by numbers from its run of the mill script.
There are of course similarities with many recent films such as the brilliant Blade Runner 2049, and of course the aforementioned M3GAN, where technology replaces someone dear, and so this will unfortunately fade into the depths of uninspiring and forgettable, leaving the Blumhouse universe flailing to bring back the 4 foot tall killer doll; and relight what we all adored before with her diminutive and sassy brutal lessons. As with my film of the year, Obsession, a great movie requires not only great acting but also a solid script that can be adapted along the way. Over and above, a familiar premise that expands on what has been done before, pushing the boundaries is what makes viewing new films exciting. SOULM8TE is no such film although it does produce something highly rewatchable.
Ironically SOULM8TE lacks the very soul we would come to expect from the majority of our seasoned Atomic Monster producers.
Author: Piers, Maidstone Store
