TIM review – sinister household gadget leads AI thriller of android infatuation

Walking robot who looks like a Nazi youth leader turns out – surprise surprise – to have creepy designs on his owner

As if the future of AI wasn’t already nightmarish enough, along comes this British sci-fi thriller with its storyline about an AI servant becoming dangerously infatuated with his female owner. It’s a creepy premise: a cross between Fatal Attraction and The Servant, Harold Pinter and Joseph Losey’s 1963 drama about a malevolent manservant. Though in the end TIM might be too silly to be scary and yet not sharp enough to work as satire.

Part of the problem is the AI itself, a humanoid robot inoffensively named TIM (short for “technologically integrated manservant”), played by Eamon Farren. There’s no question of keeping us guessing about his intentions: TIM is sinister from the get-go. With his slicked-down blond hair and penetrating blue-eye stare, he looks like a spoof of a Nazi youth leader with a flash of Hannibal Lecter.

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