Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Spencer Brown
Starring: Georgina Campbell, Eamon Farren, Mark Rowley,
Nathaniel Parker, Amara Karan
Like this year's other Artificial Intelligence thriller,
M3GAN, T.I.M. arrives fortuitously at a time when the dangers
of AI have become mainstream news. Human workers have found themselves
replaced by machines since the industrial revolution, but the rapid
advancements in AI and its equally swift adoption by cost and corner
cutting corporations we've witnessed in the past few months is striking.
Machines have long been performing menial tasks, but now we're seeing
artists lose work to AI. At time of writing, Hollywood's actors and
writers are currently on strike as they seek assurances that the studios
won't replace them with AI. Online articles are prefaced with
disclaimers telling you they were "written" by AI. Perhaps the scariest
part of all this is how so many humans are celebrating this sudden
shift, treating the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg as rock stars
rather than the men responsible for ushering forth the coming
robopocalypse.
The thing about AI as a creative tool of course is that it relies on
the prior work of billions of humans over scores of centuries. At least
for now, an AI model can't create something original, it can only riff
off what came before. That said, that's the case with a lot of human
created movies.
Take T.I.M. for example. It may be dealing with a very
timely issue, but it's essentially a high-tech update of a very old
thriller format, that of the evil nanny/servant. Its plot beats are
recognisable to anyone who has seen the likes of The Nanny,
The Servant
and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle. But it manages to smartly integrate current concerns into a second
hand narrative.
In the near future (or perhaps right now; who knows how quickly this
sort of stuff is developing?), robotics engineer Abi (Georgina Campbell) takes a job at Integrate Robotics, who are developing Technologically
Integrated Manservants, or TIMs for short. A TIM is basically a
human-looking android programmed to take care of all household chores.
There's one issue though – the hands don't quite work correctly. It's up
to Abi to come up with a quick solution so her company can "beat the
Chinese" and rush TIM to market.
Along with being gifted a plush new home for herself and hubby Paul (Mark Rowley), Abi is given a prototype TIM. Paul doesn't like the idea of having
this uncanny valley looking twerp constantly hanging around, but Abi is
unable to return the droid as her boss insists it would look bad if one
of his employees refused his product.
TIM is played with quiet menace by Eamon Farren, whose stoic features make him ideal casting for an evil robot. TIM is
a classic case of a tin man who wants a heart. He feels something for
Abi, and questions her on what "love" is. Of course, things that we
can't explain like love are what separate us from machines, and Abi's
inability to give him a clear answer frustrates the droid. Thus follows
the classic narrative of the interloping home help, as TIM schemes and
manipulates his way into prising Abi away from Paul.
It's here that director Spencer Brown and co-writer
Sarah Govett integrate timely issues regarding how much of our
privacy we sacrifice for the sake of what is billed as an easier life.
TIM is given access to Abi and Paul's passwords, which allows him to
scan through old emails looking for "gotcha" moments to use against the
latter, who was recently caught cheating on Abi. Our current paranoia
about deepfake technology comes into play too, with TIM using his
editing skills to create damning fake footage. The idea of a new product
being rushed to the market before it's fully operational will resonate
with anyone who purchased a piece of new tech only to find it required
several updates to perform its actual functions.
T.I.M. functions as an engaging tech thriller but it
lacks the satirical edge of M3GAN. It's more concerned with exploiting our fears than satirising them,
but it never quite goes far enough. There's an undercurrent of Paul's
emasculation that's never really explored. If TIM can perform every task
more efficiently than any human, does this carry into the bedroom? Does
TIM possess genitalia or is he like a Ken doll down there? There's also
a subplot regarding Abi and Paul's attempts to conceive a child that
initially made me suspect the film was set to go down the same route as
Donald Cammell's Demon Seed, but this plotline never really goes anywhere.
Something T.I.M. does quietly tap into is the
dehumanisation of those who perform manual labour. The English middle
class accented Abi is comfortable walking around in various states of
undress in the presence of TIM because she views him merely as a
computer while her working class Scottish hubby can't relate to such an
idea. The privileged have been treating their workers as robots for
centuries, so little wonder they might embrace the real thing.
