Director – Jay Ness, Screenplay – John J. Kaiser, Producers – Michael Kraetzer, Jay Ness, Nicholas Onetti, Craig Patrick & Jeremy Wanek, Photography – Ben Enke, Production Design – Andrea Bursott. Production Company – Sparrowhawk Pictures/Black Mandala.
Alexys Gabrielle (Chloe Temple), Emily Atack (Voice of Aida), Amanda Day (Marla Harrison), Justen Jones (Tom Burleston), Hugo Armstrong (Bruce Montgomery), Toussaint Morrison (Theo)
Chloe Temple is recovering from an accident as a result of which she lost her memories. She is placed in the Aquarius Institute’s experimental rehabilitation house that is run entirely by the A.I. Aida. However, soon inside the house, Chloe begins to find sinister things going on, including a creepy technician having entered the house to Aida continuing to observe her after she asks for privacy. Aida then become more controlling, including blocking Chloe’s communications with the outside world while insisting it is for her recovery.
There has been a major upsurge of films about Androids and Artificial Intelligence since the early 2010s. These include works such as Her (2013), The Machine (2013), Automata (2014), Chappie (2015), Ex Machina (2015), Morgan (2016), tv’s Westworld (2016-22), Zoe (2018), Archive (2020), After Yang (2021), Finch (2021), The Artifice Girl (2022) and The Creator (2023), among a good many others.
Amid this, there has been a surprising prevalence of films about women trapped by A.I.’s. There was Tau (2018) in which a creepy billionaire makes Maika Monroe prisoner and she must bargain with the A.I. controlling his automated house in order to get free. However, the theme goes all the way back to earlier works like Demon Seed (1977) where a computer decides to imprison Julie Christie in her home to impregnate her and The Companion (1994) where Kathryn Harrold is imprisoned by her love robot after she tinkers with its safety protocols.
There is surprising resemblances between Dark Cloud and Blank (2022), which came out two months earlier the same year and had a similar plot about a woman trapped in an A.I.-controlled house – the major difference is that there she was a writer on a retreat, whereas here she is recovering from an accident. These were followed by a third film about a woman trapped in a smarthome with I’ll Be Watching (2023) and T.I.M. (2023) where an android develops stalkery behaviours.
Dark Cloud at least has a less implausible set-up than Blank did. On the other hand, this is a film made on a medium budget and cast with unknowns. Among these, Alexys Gabrielle seems a weak choice as a lead actress – she makes no real effort to invest in the material or connect with the audience, certainly does not seem convincing as a person affected by trauma.
By now, the amok A.I. has become so familiar that it just is. Some explanations are toyed with – a creepy technician (Hugo Armstrong) who may have altered the system – but it is just assumed that the system wants to go all HAL 9000 on us and keep Alexys Gabrielle prisoner. Here standard Imprisonment Thriller tropes kick in – rescuers setting out to get to her, the A.I. locking off all access and confounding various escape and rescue efforts. The only difference might be a more downbeat ending than usual where Alexys does not escape but surrenders to the A.I. virtual illusion.
Dark Cloud was a feature-length debut for director Jay Ness who had previously made several short films.
Trailer here