Remember that feeling you had when The Matrix and its ideas of a fully constructed digital reality began springing to life? The deeper that film went, the more confused we got, but at the same time, our confusion forced us to consider the world around us. Funny, because artificial intelligence didn’t have nearly the impact on our lives then as it does now. While you can scarcely find a movie nowadays that doesn’t involve AI in some way, they aren’t going very far to ponder any new questions. Adam Stern’s sci-fi thriller Levels goes deeper than some in pondering the moral and philosophical concerns when it comes to AI but lacks the screenplay to balance it with the action fans of this genre crave.
Levels is led by Peter Mooney as everyman bookstore owner Joe, and The Expanse fan-favorite Cara Gee as Ash. Joe is pretty content with his life, but he doesn’t become truly happy until Ash comes walking into his shop to ask him out on a date. But that happiness is short-lived when Ash is gunned down by a mysterious stranger, who then vanishes before Joe can figure out which way is up. Unable to cope, Joe contemplates suicide but finds that he is incapable of doing it. The gun literally will not fire when pointed at his head. When Joe begins receiving messages from Ash, seemingly from beyond the grave, he learns that everything he thought he knew about the world was wrong.
Levels borrows some of its cues from films such as The Matrix and Free Guy, contemplating the digital world around Joe and his purpose as a digital construct. The film works best during this stretch as we learn things at the same time Joe does, and we get a sense of his confusion about his place in this newly-realized existence. At what point does AI become so realistic that it must become subject to our laws, our rules, our common sense of decency? Joe might be an AI program but is it okay to harm him as we do people in our world? Does he deserve to be treated any different than the rest of us, simply because he is programmed to believe he is fully human?
A problem with Levels is that what we learn is told through seemingly endless amounts of explanatory dialogue, grinding the film to a halt. And it’s a shame, because visually it looks extremely good, far beyond the limited budget it likely had. Stern is a visual wiz with many credits to his name, and that experience is evident. Although there’s far too little in the action department, both Gee and Mooney prove capable and compelling in sequences that look as if they were pulled right out of a high-end video game. In the case of Gee, it’s always a treat to see an Indigenous actress get the spotlight in a film such as this, and I hope it means we get to see more of her stateside. Ultimately, Levels is an accomplished but unspectacular film that can’t hold a candle to more exciting films tackling AI. There are levels to this, after all.
RLJE Films releases Levels in theaters on November 1st.