An AI slasher isn’t a new idea—The Terminator was released over 40 years ago. Still, as new tech threatens to hoover up the world’s water supply in the name of pulping the world’s white collar jobs, misguiding mushroom fanciers, and drowning us in fascist disinformation, the subgenre seems as relevant as it’s ever been.
Peter Webber’s DRAGN, set during a corporate team-building exercise, is well-positioned to satirize and capitalize on the zeitgeist. Unfortunately, every aspect of the production—writing, acting, character development, directing, storytelling, special effects—is half-assed and too poorly-conceived to take advantage of the high concept. The one minor saving grace, arguably, is that, for a film about the dangers of AI, DRAGN manages to be bad in a very human way.
The not very compelling hero of the outing is Tom Wilson (James Paxton) a lanky tech nerd who takes his boss’ place at the last minute in a nature hike team-building exercise in Serbia. Tom’s joined by a range of stereotypical and under-developed co-workers—a hard ass ex-military asshole, an oversexed young blonde woman, a doomed Black man, etc. What they (or most of them) don’t know is that they’re being shadowed by a new military drone prototype. And what they really don’t know is that the drone, meant to just follow them, has gone rogue and is out to kill.
The script gestures a couple of times at using the killer drone as a metaphor for AI job-killing; the big boss threatens to fire everybody, ex-army hard ass (Carlos Bardem) fumes a bit about how he’ll do anything to protect his employment. Alternately, some dialogue evokes Frankenstein, suggesting that the DRAGN drone’s cruel and violent because its first experiences (with asshole mercs) were of cruelty and violence.
But those potentially interesting themes are buried under uninspired retreads of retreads. The slasher goes for the person who had sex first, because AI drones enforce sexual morality for some reason. Tom has a loyal wife and adorable daughter who motivate him without having any other distinguishing characteristics. The drone’s an unstoppable killer force except when the plot requires it to be unable to navigate a door.
The visuals are also impressively unimpressive. DRAGN is expressionless, smooth and unemotive; the violence it inflicts via flamethrower or darts or spinning blade, is all of the sort we’ve seen onscreen before. M3GHAN, with its uncanny little girl AI antagonist, or Companion, with its sit-com dynamics punctuated by uncanny spurts of violence, are exponentially more effective. For that matter, Terminator’s grimy mayhem is a lot more up-to-date than this supposedly newer model.
There’s no reason to watch this. Still, in an age of slick AI slop intended to (generally unconvincingly) trick you into thinking that someone devoted time, effort, and genius to their art, it’s refreshing to be reminded that humans can make boring, derivative, and largely worthless movies all on their own, without the intercession of an algorithm.
There are lots of shoddy, bottom-drawer slashers, sans inspiration or innovation made by people who loved the genre or hoped to make a buck or just wanted their names on a movie. Many people insist that AI will not replace great art, but films like DRAGN suggest that maybe it won’t replace mediocre-to-bad art either. It’s a victory for humanity, of a sort, when even the boring, predictable humans who lack charm, charisma, or smarts can survive the drone.