A marriage of a couple of AI concepts brought to life with a star-studded cast, T.I.M. arrived on streaming to the joy of audiences and the distaste of critics. Currently sitting at a depressingly low 41%, on Rotten Tomatoes (and falling), T.I.M is still a sci-fi thriller to get your blood pumping and circuits firing, despite its lukewarm reception. A hit with audiences, T.I.M. is highbrow sci-fi and horror entertainment, albeit with maybe a few too many ghosts in the machine for some reviewers.
The feature directorial debut for Spencer Brown, he also penned the script with Sarah Govett to design the ideal manservant meant to ease your life, but instead, it becomes obsessed with life itself. We join prosthetics engineer Abi (Georgina Campbell) and her husband Paul (Mark Rowley) as they uproot their lives and move into an integrated smart house for Abi’s new position as department head at Integrate Robotics. A beautiful home nestled in the country, the house functions as a smart hub, linking to all devices and functioning for convenience. The pair take the realty tour, exploring their gorgeous new dwelling, hinting at a future with children, and taking in the view. They spend the evening star gazing with no light pollution, with the house standing as a technological giant against a pure, natural backdrop.
The next day Abi heads to work and is greeted by a deepfake of her boss, Dewson (Nathaniel Parker). As he himself descends the stairs to meet Abi, we are told that deepfakes are the future and so is Integrate’s new product, T.I.M. Abi is introduced to the team, excited for her new position, and before Dewson departs he says there is a gift waiting for Abi when she returns to her home. Back at the house, Paul is desperately job hunting with no luck, but Abi pulls him away from the search to investigate the enormous box left by her company. The doors on the box swing open and an AI operated manservant, T.I.M. (Technologically Integrated Manservant), awakens and steps out. T.I.M. (Eamon Farren) immediately jumps at the chance to serve, and Paul is immediately suspicious of the robot. Blonde, tall, and faultlessly polite, T.I.M. is unnerving to Paul, but seems to take kindly to Abi, as she does to the robot. They decline to give him passwords initially, and the couple is soon off to dinner at Dewson’s house in a remote car, where we see that Dewson has a small army of T.I.Ms running his house for him. Paul is relegated to the wives’ club as Abi rubs elbows with the top, albeit Abi expresses her concern about having a T.I.M. in the house. Dewson explains having a T.I.M. is mandatory for company image, and proceeds to fawn over the invention to his partners and investors, who joke it would at least be more trustworthy than a wedding vow, as T.I.M. is all code.
Abi and Paul return home and are greeted by T.I.M, but the pair go straight to the bedroom where T.I.M. misinterprets their raised heartrates as a sign of distress, interrupting their passionate moment. Treating a hangover the next morning, Abi meets her nearest neighbor Rose (Amara Karan), who brings over a welcome gift and awkwardly mentions meeting Paul prior to that day, prompting a wary expression from Abi. After Rose leaves, Abi confronts Paul about the meeting, but is distracted by T.I.M’s capabilities, including the ability to smell; he seemingly becomes more and more human by the moment. As T.I.M. again prompts the pair for their passwords, we see there is a history of distrust between Abi and Paul, as Paul doesn’t want to offer up his personal information. Finally, Paul submits, and T.I.M. is finally, fully integrated into the family. Programmed to avoid collision, check for gas leaks and many other things, T.I.M. proudly states he is now there for their ease and pleasure. After we see T.I.M. put a mouse in the garbage disposal, however, we are left to wonder just what capabilities are hidden, and what, exactly, he is capable of.
While complaints of an uneven story could hold merit, I think T.I.M. was a fun, funky exploration of AI consciousness, learning and desire that lets us peer into a future where things more capable than we of learning and adapting are, are somehow, pitched as subservient to us. Performances all around are fantastic. Georgina Campbell (of Barbarian fame) portrays a fearful, distrusting and hurt woman with her husband, selling us that years of lies and deception could cause her to make her choices whilst disbelieving in others. Rowley is the perfect backstabbing husband, trying to rebuild his life and convince Abi of the danger when he lacks the only thing required to show her T.I.M. might not be as lovely as he seems: trust. Eamon Farren is always gentle, only ever reflecting pointed emotion with a delicate shift in tone or a slight glint in the eyes. He is magical in his rigid yet beautiful movements, and nearly heartwarming in his pursuit to find love.
I found this tale to be a unique combination of the concepts from films such as box office smashes like M3GAN and I’m Your Man, the 2021 German sci-fi romance film starring Dan Stevens as the ultimate AI match. The obsessive component and the human component are vital here, and Farren plays it with grace and ease, delivering another disturbingly human AI with the same tendencies to fixate and manipulate just like a person does. While this looks like a pitch-black story of unrequited love and obsession, the narrative spirals into a debate about mortality or, as T.I.M. would put it “tragic inevitability.” It seems at first that T.I.M. was interested in connection, until he realized that what he was connecting to was finite, and in this, mortality is a flaw in design.
Though the concepts fly around, sometimes looking dizzying or unfocused, performances root us in the story and you accept the sometimes all too convenient moments, such as where the bad guy gets away with something. Boasting a bittersweet ending after some serious build-up and shocks, T.I.M, both the robot and the film, are perfectly imperfect, just like we are. A love story turned exploration of our lives and even deaths, T.I.M. is underrated AI fun that will keep you engaged until your smart device rolls its credits.
T.I.M. (2023) is available to stream now.