RLJ Entertainment’s Uncanny is now on Digital Video
Directed by Matthew Leutwyler (
“For ten years, inventor David Kressen has lived in seclusion with his inventions, including Adam, a robot with incredible lifelike human qualities. When reporter Joy Andrews is given access to their unconventional facility, she is alternately repelled and attracted to the scientist and his creation. But as Adam exhibits emergent behavior of anger and jealousy towards her, she finds herself increasingly entangled in a web of deception where no one’s motives are easily decipherable.”
Leutwyler was kind enough to asnwer a few questions I tossed his way….
Bloody Disgusting: Your new film Uncanny deals with artificial intelligence, which is one of those things that seems cool on the surface but the more you dig into it the scarier it gets. What are your thoughts on artificial intelligence? Is that a field we should be spending money on?
Matthew Leutwyler: I am a huge science and technology junkie. Like most people, I use advancements in both of these fields every day but we do need to start to be wary of where this is all headed and the speed which it is moving there. The characters in our film are all interested in pushing tech to its limits. I don’t think any of them thinks that it’s science’s place to question the morality or the dangers of where it is trying to get us to. That’s for someone else to worry about. To legislate. Adam, David, and even Joy are pretty hardcore. Constantly in pursuit of empirical truth without concern for the consequences. Of course at the end of their journey there might be some regret. Some concern about where this might be headed. I mean, even if all these technological advancement can be considered the next step in our evolution, we have to remember that evolution will always have anomalies and that bad things can grow from it.
BD: Uncanny isn’t the first film to deal with unruly AI. Are there any past films that dealt with this subject that you looked to for inspiration?
ML: When I was reading the pages as Shahin was banging them out I remember thinking about the Demon Seed. A film that really freaked me out when I was a kid. I think I had that in the back of my mind throughout the shoot.
BD: When an audience sits down to watch Uncanny, what do you hope they take away from it?
ML: First I hope they had fun but I think you always want the audience to talk about your film later. This film definitnely is one where you can look back on it and see certain things that you weren’t aware of on the first viewing. It’s also dealing with issues that are really timely as they pertain to where we as a society are headed in regards to incorporating technology into very important aspects of our lives. How far can we, should we, push it before it will start to deteriorate or possibly completely destroy our world.
BD: As a director you’re kind of hard to peg to one specific genre. Is that by design that you’ve jumped around a bit or have things just kind of worked out that way?
ML: I am attracted to lots of different types of films and stories but I am always interested in films with characters that seem to have a hard time doing the right thing. Characters that struggle with their darker side. So that seems to be a constant in all of the films I have worked on as producer or director.
BD: You’re trying to convince someone to watch Uncanny. What do you tell them?
ML: I tell them it’s not just for sci-fi fans. I love films that stir debate. Not necessarily films that provide answers. I think beyond being a creepy, slow burn type of thriller, Uncanny does this. It’s also fun to hear the audience as they leave the theater discussing whether they figured out where it was all heading while they were watching it. At it’s core it’s a story that questions what it means to be “human.” Of course the complexities of that question reveal that it’s not really a single question but more of a multi-ˇpart. What is unique to humanity now? What will be unique to humanity in the future? Can science provide the answer? And, as we move closer to the “singularity” one has to wonder if this will give new meaning to the question altogether.
Also, I hope that it brings up ideas of evolution. Is this technological advancement that we are experiencing the next step in evolution? Since we have basically become, at a biological level, evolutionarily stagnant, is this technological advancement really just the next step in human evolution? And if that is true then how will our biological selves merge with our new technological selves? I think in our film, Rainn Wilson’s character feels more like Kurzweil in this sense. That this merging is a good thing. That there is a real possibility of human immortality in the next few decades if we keep pushing to find the answers.
I’m also curious, as this film finds its audience, how older and younger people’s feeling will differ about it. My sense is that younger people are less scared of tech. They like being wired and using tech to help them accomplish so much. To be the best, most effective person they can be. Older people are more hesitant, skeptical to give over tasks that they have done for their entire lives to a machine. And of course if you like a film that is smart and a bit sinister then we’ve got you covered.
