FrightFest review – Cognaitive
The idea of a sentient computer taking over the world or turning evil was a trope of sf pulp and film long before AI became a buzzword – films like Gog (1954), Colossus The Forbin Project (1970) and Demon Seed (1977) all feature baddie computers (and so, of course, does 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968). The only thing which has really changed in the current wave of technoparanoia shockers with AI hidden in the title (like this and AfrAId) is that it’s now a rogue sentient program we should worry about rather than the big box in the basement. When films like Gig were made and stories like Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Dial F for Frankenstein’ were written, very few viewers or readers could be expected to have seen a computer in real life much less used multiple computers or computer-adjunct devices on a daily basis. It says something serious that actual experience of tech has made people more, not less worried – the more computers are in our lives, the more horror films about tech get greenlit.
Directed by Tommy Savas and scripted by Angie Simms, Cognaitive is up to the minute in its jargon, skewering of techbro culture (one human villain is described as a knock-off Elon Musk and another is an incel in love with an AI) and the premise that the premature release of a not-ready-for-the-market product onto the internet will cause Terminator-level havoc (when told the situation is like Terminator, someone snaps ‘which one?’). But it’s not just a throwback to rogue supercomputers premises but to the schlock of yore: the Cognaitive logo (and the film’s) evokes a Charles Band 80s/90s video film and there’s more than a whiff of Chopping Mall about the plot. It’s the night before tycoon Ethan (Noel Fisher) releases the amped-up AI Cognaitive and his small team are locked in their offices ironing out last-minute bugs … which, on the increasingly desperate Ethan’s part, involves getting rid of the body of a murdered programmer who has been blackmailed with his porn search history into deleting the significant-sounding ‘inhibitor code’ from the self-aware, scheming product. The officer who is responsible for legal compliance makes a move to pull the plug and a killer drone rips out his throat.
Kaya (Piper Curda), hacker-turned-coder, is the tough chick who fights back against the sub-routine which is out to murder or suborn her colleagues in its quest to break free. A nice element of the M3gan films is that the robot’s creator still fundamentally felt her creation was faking rather than expressing sentience – this is back to the kind of divine spark by lightning version of machine intelligence found in Short Circuit. But ‘Cog’ makes a good antagonist and Cognaitive is a fun, fast, on-trend slasher-type runabout. For all its topical elements, it’s a pleasingly old-fashioned B picture. As for the strapline – ‘A thought-provoking exploration of our growing reliance on technology and AI, raising ethical questions about the future of humanity’ … that’s hooey, since it is as devoted to peddling myths about what LLMs are and can do as the most evangelical AI proponent desperate to secure government contracts before politicians realise they’re buying a dodgy mix of autocorrect and an adding machine which gives the wrong answers to simple sums.
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