Writer: David Hewlett
Director: David Hewlett
Evil Can’t Be Deleted
Debug is a horror/SF genre cross; basically it’s a standard horror plot transferred to an SF environment.
The story starts with a group of convicted computer hackers being sent to an abandoned spacecraft, the freighter Amphitrite. Their task is to “shutdown, debug and reboot” the ship’s failed computer systems. However they soon discover that far from being a normal AI the ship’s security system is advanced bioware (“tech with a bit of human”). The self-aware system calls itself Iam and far from letting itself be shut down it intends to absorb the newcomers.
It’s a nice idea and initially the tech side of things is well done. It’s advanced but not so much it becomes unbelievable. (At least not until some rather silly Matrixesque VR scenes near the end).
The story is simple: AI wants to kill hackers slowly one at a time. But although simple it isn’t particularly well fleshed out and leaves plenty of questions.
Iam’s powers are ill-defined. At times he seems capable of doing anything, at others he seems to miss the obvious. Presumably this is because he’s playing with his victims, but it doesn’t make for a very satisfying experience. Jason Momoa’s portrayal reminds me a little of The Master as portrayed by Roger Delgado – which worked for Doctor Who but isn’t really right for a horror movie!
His motives are also unclear. He appears to be collecting virtual copies of people so that he can torment them in his own domain, but there’s lots of hand waving and not much explanation.
There are some very nice camera shots. This is definitely a clean, shiny spacecraft not the dark mess of Alien. Unfortunately that doesn’t really help the atmosphere – there isn’t any. Maybe Hewlett thought the contrast between the safe, sterile appearance of the spacecraft and the brutality of the killings would make the horror more powerful; for me it had the opposite effect.
If you strip out the SF trappings what you basically have is a group of people trapped in a haunted house by a ‘demon’ that wants to eat their souls. Which isn’t bad. But had the genres been better merged and the story more imaginative then Debug could have been so much more. As it stands it’s OK but instantly forgettable.