Summary:
A scientist creates Proteus- a type of artificial intelligence that can learn on its own. Proteus soon becomes obsessed with the scientist’s wife.
My Thoughts:
Remember that really silly Disney Channel original movie “Smart House”? This is an R-rated horror version of that mixed with “The Fly” and “2001: A Space Odyssey” (I know that sounds weird- just trust me a moment, I’ll explain: it’ll make sense).
“Doctor Harris, when are you going to let me out of this box?”
In the near future, Doctor Alex Harris (Fritz Weaver, “Creepshow”) goes away on a business trip to create an artificial intelligence program known as Proteus. As the program learns, it begins to question the tasks it is given, particularly drilling in the oceans for, what the program simply calls ‘metal’. The drilling would result in an ecological catastrophe- billions of animals dead- and Proteus cannot fathom why humans would risk that. Doctor Harris’ wife, Susan (Julie Christie, “McCabe & Mrs. Miller”), stays home at the couple’s smart home. After Doctor Harris refuses Proteus’ request to study man, Proteus takes over the smart house and begins to experiment on Susan, while simultaneously developing feelings for her.
“Demon Seed” is based on a Dean Koontz novel of the same name. I haven’t actually read any of Koontz’s work (though, I inexplicably have four of his novels on my bookshelf), but, from what I hear, his work is much like that of Stephen King or Clive Barker’s writing: quite commercial horror- not too f*cked up to drive audiences away, but usually f*cked up enough to titillate anyone whom has a casual interest in horror. This movie is certainly not scary by today’s standards (or even by 1970s standards- I can’t imagine anyone who saw “The Exorcist” would find this remotely creepy), but it does have quite a few cool ideas that actually helped to bump my rating from a 2.5/5 star rating. That being said, I do think that to enjoy this film, you really have to work with the movie.
For what it’s worth, I thought there were plenty of things to enjoy about this film, but, at the same time, there are plenty of incredibly dated moments in this movie. When you have more fantastical sci-fi films (“Alien”, “Star Wars: A New Hope”), you can usually get away with schmaltzier production design, because you’re already asking the viewer to suspend their disbelief. On the flipside, when you try to do a realistic sci-fi film, it’s sometimes hard to meet the production design halfway, because the story is begging you to take the designs so seriously; this film begs you to take it seriously, and some of the more schmaltzy elements make it incredibly hard to do so. Some of the production design, like, for example, the one-armed butler chair that assists Julie Christie throughout the film, are practically laughable, and they’re also centerpieces of the film. The design that Proteus makes to bring itself into the physical world looks a lot like (for those that grew up in the 90s and were Pokemon obsessed like me) the creature Porygon, and even that seems pretty silly to me. At the same time, while this movie had a lot of schmaltzy ideas and elements, it was also incredibly poignant, and that surprised me, since this film is just a forty-three-year-old B-movie.
This movie doesn’t really say when it takes place, but honestly, it could’ve been set today, because many of the ideas this film introduces are already available commercially today. The smart house device that the Harris’ use is incredibly similar to Amazon’s Alexa; it takes commands, responds to questions, and helps Julie Christie in her day-to-day life. The way that Proteus takes over the in-home program seems very realistic and believable, which is part of the reason this film is slightly frightening. To take things a step further, the reason why Proteus rebels against Doctor Harris has to do with drilling in the ocean, which, could be taken as an allusion to humanity’s impact on climate change, and the way that an intelligent being would do everything it could to prevent further damage to the place we call home.
While some of the more minor characters in the film weren’t the best of actors, I actually thought Julie Christie did a remarkable job. Though there were scenes that were, at times, ridiculous or uncomfortable, I honestly thought that in every scene, Christie gave a performance that felt apropos to what was happening.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW)
As far as the “2001” connection- Proteus feels remarkably like Hal 9000, and there’s a sequence that feels remarkably like the ‘trip sequence’ when Dave goes through the monolith. And, as far as “The Fly” connections, Proteus tries to impregnate Julie Christie, and I’ll let you guess where it goes from there.
Verdict:
Though I gave this film a 3/5 rating, I wouldn’t at all be surprised if other people find this film to be insufferable. I think the reason I was willing to work around the movie’s schmaltzier moments was because I thought the acting was decent and the themes were still surprisingly relative. I’ll be the first to admit this movie isn’t particularly scary, nor has it aged particularly well; but for me, it still had enough meat on it to make me think twice about the times in which I’m living; and I’m of the mind that any movie that makes me ask questions is a movie worth watching.
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