Neutopia

How far will technology go? Forty years ago with The Terminator, James Cameron blasted the concept of a world ravaged by artificial intelligence across the screen. Four decades on and, suddenly, the rise of AI is prevalent in the news and social media. The wonders are there, but so are the warnings and in Kane Wilson’s excellent Neutopia, we see some chilling answers to the questions of the limits of artificial intelligence.

In the year 2034, the government are pushing for 'Neutopia' - a society where humans and artificial intelligence are harmonised in the mind. Londoners are now linked to the Artificial Intelligence Network (AIN), as a result of a mandatory brain implant known as the Neural Connect. For Myles (Laurie Duncan), it is not enough. He needs more. The solution? ‘Perfect Overdrive’. Described as “artificial intelligence selective consciousness”, it programs whatever is asked of it. And, with a high-stakes business presentation looming, it seems to be just what Myles needs right now..

Wilson’s vision of 2030’s inner-city London may not be a borderline dystopia, but its dark, gritty and its domination by technology has left it soulless. Here, data has replaced drugs in the criminal underworld; Myles’ addiction is not to illegal substances, but to bootlegged artificial intelligence software - or, perhaps more aptly, mindware. When he finds no food for dinner, or for the dog, there’s a simple solution. He just needs to say ‘Perfect Overdrive’ and tell it what he needs. In 2024, we have to wonder how far we are becoming dependent on technology. In the 2034 of Neutopia, that question has long since passed. Wilson presents a society not so much technologically-driven as it is technologically-ridden; Myles’ mental and physical world is completely dependent on AI. Independent action and thought have vanished from his life. Whenever there’s a problem, he calls on Perfect Overdrive. Predictably, things soon go awry and Myles’ over-reliance on his integrated AI brings his world crashing down around him. But, perhaps that’s the point. We need to see Myles’ Faustian downfall coming. It would be somewhat worrying if we didn’t.

Beginning with a somewhat ironic, yet nonetheless foreboding, Terminator-style credits sequence, Wilson strikingly jumps to a setting entirely different from what we might expect at this point and, indeed, from what we see in the rest of the film. Myles is sat lifelessly, staring blankly out into a beautiful, sun-filled garden. In his hand, he clutches a child's snow-globe, the only thing which seems to trigger some sign some of life back into him. Wilson then flashes back to begin Myles' story. We may have started with a nod to The Terminator but, structurally, Wilson's film plays out more like Citizen Kane - the image of the snow-globe to set up the mystery, the flashback, the rise and fall of the protagonist and the pay-off resolving the enigma of the opening scene.

At the film's end, visited by his daughter, the catatonic Myles is unable to respond; his eyes are a deathly blank stare, his mind presumably melted from the melding of his brain with Perfect Overdrive. Glancing at the globe, beneath Myles' dead gaze, something begins to happen. The memory of a moment. A feeling. The credits roll. Neutopia presents a disquieting vision of the very near future - one where the world isn't unnecessarily ruled by AI, but where the independence of an individual has become subservient to it. Yet, its quietly powerful ending, suggests a chance of hope and the power of humanity above anything artificial.