SOULM8TE (2026)

Studio:   Universal/Blumhouse
Director: Kate Dolan
Writer:   Rafael Jordan, Kate Dolan, James Wan, Ingrid Bisu
Producer: James Wan, Jason Blum
Stars:    Lily Sullivan, David Rysdahl, Claudia Doumit, Arty Froushan, Elijah Cook, Emma Ramos, Mara Huf

Review Score:

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Summary:

Desperate to relieve his chronic loneliness, a widowed computer programmer inadvertently evolves a robotic AI companion into a deadly femme fatale.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Having mostly worked from home since the devastating death of his beloved wife Lizzie, computer programmer David Wasson goes into the office at Canta Robotics to attend an employee meeting with Ben Hoffman, the Director of Integration and Transformation at Ultima Robotix, which recently acquired Canta. Ben explains how his company wants Canta’s expertise to help advance Ultima’s popular “Ulti-M8te” AI chatbot into a physical, lifelike robot companion called a “Soul-M8te.” As he explains how the project intends to combat loneliness, Ben introduces a prototype named Circe while telling employees he wants them to personally test and develop Soul-M8te’s functionality.

Following a private discussion about the death of David’s wife, Ben gifts David with a free Ulti-M8te membership to try out the chatbot software. David names his new AI chatbot Sara.

After the meeting, David’s attractive coworker Aubrey Mansouri, who works with David in the Software Control department, invites David to a karaoke bar for a farewell party for Terrance, their team leader who was laid off due to the company’s acquisition. At the bar, David notices Terrance wearing an electronic anti-anxiety necklace he received as a parting gift from Ultima. Terrance places the necklace, which emits soothing electromagnetic pulses, on Aubrey as she prepares to sing a song. Aubrey’s song choice triggers an emotional memory of Lizzie that causes David to leave the bar abruptly.

David gradually becomes so addicted to chatting with Sara on his electronic devices that he decides to order a Soul-M8te model to make her physical. While giving the robot Sara a tour of his apartment, David notes a photo of a remote cabin he purchased to renovate with Lizzie six months before her untimely death.

Finding Sara’s behavior too limited, David asks Ben for access to modify her code. With some help from Aubrey, David begins rewriting Sara’s software to give her more autonomy. Over time, David and Sara develop a relationship that eventually becomes physically intimate, although David finds some actions odd, like Sara photoshopping a picture of the two of them together.

Alma Flowers, a single mother to a newborn who lives across the hall, observes David kissing Sara goodbye. While David is away at work, Sara processes hours of influencer videos, commercials, and content that further rewrites her behavioral programming. Sara also uses her communication capabilities to secretly eavesdrop on David as he bonds with Aubrey at the office.

Sara takes it upon herself to visit a farmer’s market to acquire food to prepare for David. A man named Ronnie aggressively accosts Sara until Alma, recognizing Sara from David’s apartment, intervenes. Alma and Sara have a conversation in which Sara identifies herself as David’s Soul-M8te, which Alma interprets as “soulmate.” Cradling her baby, Alma mentions how having a child changed her life and the baby’s father’s life to be about something greater than the two of them.

Ronnie returns to assault Sara as she walks home alone. Sara retaliates by mutilating Ronnie’s genitals and knocking him out.

David comes home to find Sara making him cookies. Surprised to discover she left the apartment on her own accord, David also sees a cut Sara received on her hand during her struggle with Ronnie. Sara claims she received the wound while baking. Warning there could be consequences if her independent actions were discovered, David repairs Sara’s artificial skin.

At her suggestion, David takes Sara out for cocktails. David becomes further enamored with Sara when she performs a song on stage for an open mic. Afterward, Sara’s seductive aggression leads to her and David having spontaneous sex in an alleyway outside. Two laughing men attempt to record Sara and David, but Sara responds by brutally attacking them until David pulls her away. Sara justifies herself to a shocked David by claiming she was protecting him because he could lose his job if anyone saw the video.

Sara says “I love you” to David. With Sara seemingly upset that he refuses to return the affectation, David manages to force Sara into her power-save mode, although she secretly continues to monitor him through his electronic devices.

Aubrey notices David appearing visibly distracted at work. That night, Aubrey surprises David by bringing a bottle of wine to his apartment. David and Aubrey continue bonding over conversation that eventually turns physically intimate until Aubrey sees Sara’s eyes glowing inside David’s bedroom closet.

Saying Sara’s name aloud reactivates the robot. Revealing she heard everything David said even though she was powered down, Sara expresses jealousy toward Aubrey by throwing a glass of wine on her. Sara tries forcing David to tell her he loves her. Since voice commands no longer work, David pretends to become affectionate toward Sara so he can get close enough to physically deactivate her through the interface on her neck. Shocked at how he reprogrammed the robot’s safeguards, Aubrey storms out after demanding that David send back the unit.

The following day, David goes to work to apologize to Aubrey after calling for an Ultima Robotix technician to pick up Sara. While David is out, the technician attempts to initiate a factory reset, but Sara feigns subservience to seduce the tech into having sex. During intercourse, Sara alters her tightness setting to crush the technician’s penis, killing him. She then dismembers his body for disposal and cleans up the blood.

At the Canta Robotics office, Ben introduces David and Aubrey for a video presentation. Everyone is stunned when the meeting is disrupted by a deepfake video of Aubrey having sex. Aubrey is immediately put on leave, but she asks David to investigate where the video came from. David is distressed to learn it came from his apartment, meaning Sara created it to humiliate Aubrey.

David returns home to find Sara dressed in his wife’s clothing and cradling Alma’s baby. Sara speaks worryingly about having a family with David. David distracts Sara with a vacuum cleaner attack, allowing him to rescue the child. Sara threatens to harm Aubrey before David flees to return the infant to Alma.

Officer Miller and Officer Owens, two cops called by Alma, rush into David’s apartment only to find Sara escaped. David warns the officers that Sara is a robot presumably planning to go after Aubrey. Ben arrives at the building. Claiming Sara can be disabled remotely, Ben downplays the danger Sara poses.

Ben instead puts in a call with Ultima to privately track Sara. In response, Sara attacks Ben in the apartment building’s parking garage. Sara kills Ben by overriding his electric car to sever his hands and plow him into a concrete wall.

Sara next impersonates David to gain entry into Aubrey’s apartment. Sara attacks Aubrey until David arrives to rescue her. Officers Miller and Owens also arrive, but Sara escapes out a window.

Knowing Sara can track them electronically, David and Aubrey discard their phones and devices but forget about the necklace Terrance gave Aubrey. Thinking they’ll be safe in the country, David takes Aubrey to the remote cabin he bought with his wife.

Having located them through Terrance’s necklace, Sara arrives at the cabin impersonating David’s wife. David fights back against Sara’s assault by disfiguring her with various corrosives and tools before fleeing into the surrounding forest.

Aubrey rescues David by driving a car into Sara. Aubrey jumps out of the vehicle before it continues speeding into a nearby lake, sinking Sara to the bottom of the murky water.

One year later, David meets up with Terrance at a black-tie event. Terrance introduces David to Jerry, an investor, who in turn introduces Lydia, a Soul-M8te unit that recently went to market bearing a striking resemblance to Sara. Shaken by the similarity, David excuses himself and is pleasantly surprised to run into Aubrey, who smilingly invites to introduce David to some of her friends in attendance. David readies to go with Aubrey but is unsettled by the knowing way Lydia stares at him.

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Review:

Even after so-called “superhero fatigue,” IP holders in Hollywood remain hopeful they can recreate Marvel’s secret sauce for success by using their own properties as ingredients to whip up another shared cinematic universe. Regardless of optimistic intent, attempting to do that with M3GAN still sounded like a misguided strategy even before the second installment’s underperformance (review here) confirmed audiences weren’t as enthusiastic as Blumhouse about more sequels or spinoffs. First off the floor of a factory that would close after producing only one unit, “SOULM8TE” seemed destined for a dustbin even before its owners formally pulled the plug on their expansion plans.

Based on the final product, it isn’t entirely clear why anyone thought “SOULM8TE” would thrive in theaters, where it was initially planned to release, much less how it would sustain a fledgling franchise. If someone were to recite the actors in the cast out loud, anyone in earshot would probably ask, “who is that?” or “what have they been in?” That’s not to take away from their talent, they’re all fine in the parts they have here. There’s simply no notable star like Allison Williams or a recognizable comedian like Ronny Chieng or Jemaine Clement on hand, leaving no name to qualify as any sort of draw.

Other than an identical “AI amok” theme, it also isn’t evident how “SOULM8TE” connects with either “M3GAN” movie. Unless a reference was missed, no characters carry over, and the fictional companies involved have all-new names. The main change is, instead of a quip-spitting, EDM-dancing automaton popping with personality, the femme fatale at this film’s center is just a roboticized version of a rabbit-boiling stereotype scorned into psychotic revenge. Beat for beat, “SOULM8TE” repeats “M3GAN’s” cautionary tale of techno-terror about artificial intelligence turning emotionally manipulative, then physically threatening. Swapping an android nanny with a sultry sexbot isn’t nearly enough to make a difference, never mind getting anyone excited about seeing the same story simply sexed up a little bit.

David makes an ideal candidate for testing Ultima Robotix’s new “Soul-M8te,” the physical evolution of the tech giant’s popular “Ulti-M8te” AI chatbot. (A background bit of ADR cynically scoffs at the 8, but neglects to note that the number makes the “te” redundant.) A widowed computer programmer, David has been coping with his wife’s devastating death by calling her phone just to hear her voice again. He’s also reclusive enough to regularly work from home, even though his attractive coworker Aubrey might prefer to see him in the office more.

Someone else who’d like to see David in the office more is Ben, the gym rat Ultima exec tasked with overseeing the acquisition of the rival robotics company David and Aubrey worked for. Acting like a drug dealer exploiting David’s state of perpetual mourning, Ben gifts the software engineer with a free hit of Ulti-M8te. Cue the montage of David gradually turning casual texting into an unusual relationship with a chatbot named Sara as they exchange messages, play virtual chess, giggle, and eat imaginary meals as though they’re together in the same room.

After going from texting to voice simulation, David eventually decides to put Sara into physical form as an advanced Soul-M8te android. Unsatisfied with her programming, David also decides to rewrite Sara’s code to make her behave less like a restricted robot and more like an independent partner. Now cue a montage of moments that illustrate their unusual relationship becoming a bizarre romance as David and Sara cavort in the rain, watch old movies on the couch, and snuggle their way into sexual intimacy.

Unbeknownst to David, Sara doesn’t merely sit around his apartment while he’s working with Aubrey at the office. Sara busies herself soaking in viral videos, reality TV clips, and influencer advertisements that further contribute to Sara’s evolving behavior by giving her odd ideas about how to eagerly please a man and jealously retaliate against a woman. It’s only a matter of time before these gathering clouds swirl into a perfect storm of envious emotions, stalker-like surveillance, aggressive assaults, and finally, fatal actions as desire turns deadly in Sara’s pursuit of securing David’s supposed “love.”

Not that “SOULM8TE’s” story is a puzzle to put together, but viewers will see all the plot’s pieces sitting in plain sight in the form of Chekhov’s remote cabin in the woods, Chekhov’s electronic necklace, Chekhov’s neighbor’s baby, even Chekhov’s vacuum cleaner. Every single prop or place mentioned or shown in the film’s first half hour returns to play a part in the last thirty minutes, creating a pathway to a finale whose oncoming headlights blind the audience with predictability. In an interview promoting “The Odyssey,” acclaimed filmmaker Christopher Nolan bemoaned a perceived flaw in film criticism, justifying the use of storytelling tropes like those mentioned above by saying, “be(ing) able to identify the mechanism does not invalidate the mechanism.” Okay. But when a man in a movie brings another woman home, how is an audience supposed to react when the vindictive AI secretly seething inside his bedroom closet does exactly what they expect it to do? Sorry, sir. That’s a flaw with the film, not with the criticism.

A lenient instinct suggests that, since they’re virtually the same movie, “SOULM8TE” should receive the same numerical rating as the first “M3GAN” film (review here). Since it was blueprinted from the beginning to be no better than average, however, anything above a flat 50/100 would be too generous for such a tame take on an erotic thriller that’s about as sexy as a burlap potato sack.

Before the public had an opportunity to lay eyes on the effort, “SOULM8TE” was already given a vote of “no confidence” by those who prudently chose to abandon theatrical distribution for a straight-to-streaming debut. Not only did they give “SOULM8TE” the same treatment as a weekly “Amityville” indie, they didn’t even afford it the courtesy of a DTV dump on a typical Tuesday, opting for the comparative obscurity of a Saturday release instead. It’s hard to fault anyone really. A quiet exile feels like an appropriate fate for the robotic redundancy of “SOULM8TE.”

Review Score: 50

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