Simulant: Like Blade Runner Only Differ... Nah, It's Like Blade Runner

By Chris Knight 

Rating: B-

There’s a scene in the sci-fi classic Blade Runner in which someone is trying to figure out if the individual they’re questioning is a human or an android Replicant.

The questioner mentions a tortoise, and the subject wants clarification. “Know what a turtle is?” - “Of course.” - “Same thing.”

I thought of that dialogue more than once while watching Simulant, the newest by director April Mullen, from a script by fellow Canadian Ryan Christopher Churchill. “Know what Blade Runner is? Same thing.”

Simu Liu as Casey and Alicia Sanz as the art-inclined Simulant Esme in Simulant.

OK, that’s not entirely fair. Any sci-fi story about androids in a near-future dystopia is going to owe a debt to Ridley Scott’s masterpiece. But it does feel as though the parallels are a little spot-on, right down to a grumpy Simulant-hunter peering at photos on a computer, zooming and enhancing the images in a search for clues.

Read our interviews with the director and stars of Simulant

There are also cityscape flyovers, “Seventh generation” Simulants that are almost indistinguishable from humans, a scene at a piano, and a showdown between a wounded human and a soliloquy-spouting Repli- sorry, Simulant. Even the score sounds like it was inspired by the ethereal music of Blade Runner - call it Econo-Vangelis.

So, what’s different about Simulant? Let’s start with the kick-ass cast, toplined by Jordana Brewster The Fast and the Furious franchise) as Faye, and Robbie Amell (Amazon’s streaming series Upload) as Evan, a look-alike android recreation of her dead husband, with implanted memories and, for a brief time, no inkling of his/its true nature.

The aforementioned Simulant-hunter, part of AICE (Artificial Intelligence Compliance Enforcement), is Kessler, played by Sam Worthington, whom you may know from Avatar. Casey, a brilliant programmer with a soft spot for Simulants, is Simu Liu, whom you DO know from Kim's Convenience., Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings or perhaps both.

The setting? In an easy-on-the-production-budget near future, Simulants work as domestic servants and sometimes sexual ones. They are created by Nexxium, the double X telling you it’s either a drug company, an evil company or an evil drug company.

Not content with Asimov’s three laws of robotics, Simulants have four: don’t harm humans; don’t modify yourself; don’t break any laws; do obey! That should be enough to keep them safe and compliant, but Casey and others have figured out how to hack them (not unlike unlocking your cellphone) and give them freedom from their human masters.

This makes them potentially dangerous, which is where Kessler comes in. In addition to garden-variety ballistic weapons, he has a nifty grenade launcher that creates an electromagnetic pulse, stopping Simulants in their tracks.

It’s an intriguing universe with a lot of potential directions to explore. The trouble is the screenplay wants to explore all of them.

So, we have the story of Faye and her ersatz husband, who feels like he’s the original Evan, even when he learns he’s not. Alicia Sanz plays Ésme, a Simulant who creates art and keeps a journal, who loves and sometimes hates, and who would rather be deprived of freedom than lose herself to a factory reset.

On the human side, there’s Kessler, nursing his own anti-Simulant feelings for reasons that soon become clear. And there’s Liu’s character, suave and mysterious. Again, kudos to the filmmakers for rounding up such a stellar cast!

But where to focus our attention? There’s a brief mention of the ethics of creating an artificial intelligence only to enslave it, and a question of whether empathy is the quality that differentiates true humans from mere imitations.

It’s all very au courant, as we find ourselves bombarded daily with news of chatbots and AIs which, while they may not have humanoid bodies, seem more than capable of developing emotional responses to humans, and encouraging humans to do the same. (Google “chatbot falls in love with New York Times reporter” if you don’t know what I mean.)

But with so many threads and only 95 minutes, it’s too much slick surface, not enough philosophical underpinning. Which is fine if you’re creating a shoot-’em-up action story, but Simulant isn’t quite that either. It’s a hybrid, and not quite strong enough in any one area to qualify as a hit.

It’s still an interesting story, and if you haven’t previously overdosed on the likes of Blade Runner, Her, Ex Machina, I’m Your Man and After Yang (guilty) it may come across as fresh enough to engage your attention, and make for a great introduction to the genre.

But if you’ve already spent time knocking about with Replicants, robots and androids, Simulant may feel like knock-off tech, not exactly shiny and new.

Simulant. Directed by April Mullen. Starring Robbie Amell, Jordana Brewster and Simu Liu. Opens in theatres, Friday, April 7.