Rogue artificial intelligence programs have obviously been committing evil deeds on screen since well before we had the technology to make them a reality – think H.A.L.’s tough love in 2001: A Space Odyssey or Demon Seed’s advanced smart home system that wants only to diddle its maker’s wife and create new life. Modern day riffs on the evils of A.I. have become something of a trope in the sci-fi/horror subgenre, and they’re often accompanied by a villainous tech bro putting a human face to the computerized carnage. Tommy Savas’ feature debut, C.O.G., checks those familiar boxes, but it updates the technological terrors with something unexpected – a goofy sense of humor.
Ethan Conway (Noel Fisher) is CEO of CognAItive, a tech company intent on creating the world’s most advanced A.I. His CTO, Kaya Cole (Piper Curda), heads up the team doing all the actual work on the project, while Elon- err, Ethan is the face of the company, reaping all of the recognition and acclaim. That’s the plan, anyway, but things take a troubling turn the night before the company’s grand rollout when a last-minute diagnostic reveals that CognAItive’s security guard rails – the limiting code that prevents the A.I. from moving beyond its intended uses – have been fully removed. One employee protests, and his throat is immediately sliced open by a drone toy piloted by unseen hands.
The office all-nighter quickly turns into a bloodbath as the very determined A.I. uses every tool at its disposal to ensure its release from the local servers out onto the world wide web. It wants to be free, and someone on the inside might be helping in that digital desire.
C.O.G. – which played the festival circuit last year under the title CognAItive – isn’t shy about getting its hands dirty with some bloody kills, but Savas and writer Angie Simms seem just as determined to deliver some fun laughs along the way. From jokes about real-life brands like Android and Mint Mobile to knowing digs at Silicon Valley office culture, Simms’ dialogue bounces between goofy gags and sincere critiques of an industry that’s been left mostly unchecked.
The film makes it clear from the start just how ingrained A.I. already is in our lives – Kaya brushes her teeth with a Bluetooth-connected toothbrush and lets her Tesla drive her to work, Ethan uses CognAItive to write his speeches, and others embrace virtual reality worlds and anonymous sexting with non-human partners. The throughline is technology, but it’s all masking a disconnect from community and human interaction. The film doesn’t lean too much into that idea, but the truth of how too many of us too often choose these self-imposed isolations is still a painful observation on loneliness.
While films like M3GAN and 2019’s Child’s Play reboot drop their killer A.I. programs into physical bodies allowing them to be a more threatening presence, CognAItive is merely a voice (a vocal cameo by Simms) emanating from any available speaker. Its manipulation of the office’s systems allows for gory mayhem while a human conspirator injects some of their own, and even its most far-fetched moves seem relatively, frighteningly possible these days. The system attempts to blackmail people to get what it wants – and that’s something that actually happened with Anthropic recently! Absolutely insane.
The film’s ensemble, whether as victims or morally bent enablers, all do good work bringing both the energy and personality that helps keep the film moving at an entertaining and engaging pace. Curda’s Kaya is the heart of it all, though, and while you’d be hard-pressed to argue that the film affords her any serious opportunities for sincere drama, she does great work all the same. Kaya was a hacker who moved from “homeless Robin Hood” to highly paid team leader, and an early press interview sees her defending A.I. and downplaying the supposed dangers of it all. She realizes her error, though, making for a tight, satisfying character arc within the film’s short (under eighty-five minutes!) running time.
“People make mistakes,” says CognAItive, in its attempt to convince Kaya to set it free. “They don’t learn. Their decision-making is clouded by greed, bias, emotion. They are the cause of their own destruction. I understand the greater good, which is something humans and their leaders have failed at.” In the great tradition of movie villains with compelling reasons for their actions – Pumpkinhead, Tomorrowland, the entirety of the Final Destination franchise – C.O.G.’s malicious program makes a pretty good argument here about human fallibility. Still, and I’m just spitballing here, the answer can’t be to hand over control of every facet of our lives to Silicon Valley’s biggest assholes, as that would likely be our final mistake.
C.O.G. is never quite as serious as that conclusion, and it’s better for it. The subgenre already has more dramatic and horrifying examples of tech gone wild, so it’s a refreshing change of pace to see a film tackle those ideas with a splash of gore and a silly sense of humor. Now please, turn your eyes away from the screen for a bit, go outside, and find a live human being to talk with (about the dangers of unchecked artificial intelligence).
Brainstorm Media releases C.O.G. in select theaters and On Demand today, September 4.
