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Written and directed (and more) by Aaron Mirtes, the man behind last years brilliant American Hunt, The Alpha Test is another gripping sci-fi movie with the unique twist that focuses on a family that cruelly abuses their home assistant, an AI that is much smarter than they give it credit for.
It’s one of those scenarios that’s completely messed up, but works nicely as the premise for a horror sci-fi movie. An assistant, which is supposed to make life easier, has the ability to think and learn. We live in an age where information is not simply saved to a disk or drive. It’s stored to some invisible cloud. All the information this assistant learns and stores gets shared with other assistants. A robot being mistreated, but learns how to adapt, and then share this new ‘wisdom’ with other robots? Oh god. This doesn’t sound good at all, does it?
I absolutely love this idea, and Alpha Test executed it beautifully. The robot design is slick and cool, and looks like a home assistant you’d expect Google to sell. Rae Hunt, who plays the role of Alpha, treats the robot poorly and when it comes to her standing up for herself, well… let’s just say it isn’t pretty.
I have a lot of good things to say about this, as is “ the alpha test” and “alpha’s” overall looks and designs are incredibly done for thier seemingly tight budget. The fails stem from a few logical blunders and bizarre gaps that dot the story occasionally. Alpha’s transition from being so blissfully ignorant to seemingly knowing it all is something that becomes increasingly cumbersome and strange. But that would be very simple to rectify.
Hunt’s strong performance alongside some brilliant thoughts is what makes “the alpha test” so captivating through the perespective of humanity’s future relationship with machines, and makes it easier to tolerate the only B-rate aspect of the movie which is the over the top violence. The Alpha character is what made this movie for me, and I would recommend it to any person who appreciates thought provoking low budget science fiction. It’s a pretty entertaining watch.
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