It feels like only yesterday that we were remarking on the sheer volume of terrible genre films Jonathan Rhys Meyers has started lending his name to on a prolific basis, which might be because it was. As fate would have it, then, Wifelike has made a point of debuting as one of Netflix’s most-watched movies just 24 hours later.
Per FlixPatrol, the borderline exploitative sci-fi that’s packing a miserly 14 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes has decided to solidify Rhys Meyers’ reputation as the new Nicolas Cage in waiting, taking up the mantle for having his widely-panned and entirely forgettable back catalogue make a regular play for streaming success.
The leading man’s grieving widower is assigned a lifelike AI companion designed to behave exactly like his recently-deceased spouse, but an underground group desperate to end the experiments for good have hacked her programming, causing sentient droid Meredith to begin questioning reality when memories of another life begin plaguing her artificial consciousness.
It’s a neat enough concept, but as well as the terrible reviews, Wifelike came under repeated fire from critics for attempting to explore the cold-hearted nature of the patriarchy from the perspective of the male gaze, never mind in a film that features no small amount of exposed flesh, with one scathing rebuttal simply calling it “too sleazy by half,” indicating that the consensus believes it to have fallen well short in painting its sympathetic robots who effectively exist as sex slaves and servants in a fitting light.