Sexbots in cinema are nothing new. Nor are they that old: Last year’s “Companion” and 2024’s “Subservience” both plugged into the theme. But “SOULM8TE,” which was originally scheduled for a January 2026 theatrical release and quietly scuttled onto VOD last weekend, is the first sexbot-driven erotic thriller set in “the ‘M3GAN’-verse,” as parent studio Blumhouse puts it in a press release. It’s also likely the last spin-off of the studio’s surprise 2022 horror hit.
“M3GAN” was designed as a nanny bot for a child whose guardian didn’t really know how to parent. “SOULM8TE” goes in a more stereotypical direction, replacing Allison Williams’ workaholic aunt with a lonely widower. David (David Rhysdal) is also a machine learning engineer, and his company has just been acquired by a tech mega-corporation that’s surprisingly benevolent, all things considered. Their supervisor Terrance (Elijah Cook) gets laid off, but David and his colleagues get to keep their jobs, with one caveat: They have to pivot to working on the company’s new SOULM8TE line of AI-powered robot companions.
Depressed and grieving, David finds comfort in the company’s chatbot. One thing leads to another, and David soon becomes infatuated with a prototype he names Sara (Lily Sullivan), whose code David alters to make her more like the assertive women he’s always preferred. But the same tweaks that make Sara feisty make her violent as well, as she absorbs all the contradictory messages about gender and relationships that float around the internet. Like a statuesque Johnny 5 with pouty lips and a head full of tradwife content, moving her limbs in stiff, jerky motions like one of Austin Powers’ Fembots, she then sets out to keep her man by any means necessary.
From there, the story devolves into the worst parts of ‘80s and ‘90s erotic thrillers, as Sara focuses her rage not on David, but on his coworker and romantic interest Aubrey (Claudia Doumit). There’s potential for commentary here on the way women hold each other accountable for men’s behavior, but “SOULM8TE” makes the classic mistake of indulging in the same tropes it thinks it’s critiquing. David is let off the hook entirely—the only person who’s bothered by the fact that he’s having sex with a robot is Aubrey, and that’s resolved by the end of the movie—while Sara becomes a robotic version of the misogynist trope of the jealous psycho-bitch.
And yet, the film’s five credited writers insist on throwing in a “Barbie”-style pop-feminist barb every once in a while. It’s as if Glenn Close turned to the camera in the middle of “Fatal Attraction” and said, “Men, am I right?” All the mixed messaging is hand-waved away by the fact that Sara is a robot and has no real feelings — which is fine, except for this movie to mean anything, the robot would have to be more than a robot. She’d have to be a symbol. “Companion” understood this, and made its vengeful cyborg a conduit for feminist rage against male entitlement. No such luck here.
But as long as we’re in this absurd situation, we might as well have some laughs, right? This, too, turns out to be futile, as there’s really only one scene in this 99-minute movie that really plays as camp. (Without spoiling too much, it’s a bit that also appears in the Indonesian exploitation movie “Lady Terminator.”) The sex scenes recall “Showgirls” in the amount of vigorous slapping of flesh against flesh, to be sure. But “SOULM8TE” is never as uninhibited as it needs to be to deliver the heightened ironic enjoyment that would make this movie fun.
This is director Kate Dolan’s second full-length film; her debut feature, “You Are Not My Mother,” was atmospheric Irish folk-horror, so a techno-thriller set in Seattle is a wild twist, to say the least. Dolan is treating this as a work-for-hire job—she’s the one who suggests that audiences should watch the movie ironically—so hopefully the studio’s justified lack of faith in the film won’t hurt her career too much. Instead, given that last year’s “M3GAN 2.0” was also a flop, let “SOULM8TE” serve as a reminder to film executives everywhere: Not every sleeper hit needs to become an unofficial trilogy.
