In the future, Bruno works for Atlas, a global AI company. He sits all day in his room and watches a chart on his computer screen, having to notify his superiors if it goes above a specific value. He plays video games online with his friend. In the evening, he feels depressed and activates Venus, an AI program that can assess his psychological status and help him, in this case in the form of an electronic woman that emerges from the screen.
"Electric Sheep" is a dark and bitter vision of the modern phenomenon where the more people have become connected to the Internet and AI, the more disconnected they have become from each other, which causes that feeling of existential dread of missing out on life. Produced by Kino Klub Zagreb, filmed entirely in rotoscopic animation which gives it a surreal touch, "Electric Sheep" is a 30-minute character study revolving around its protagonist, the chubby Bruno, who is the embodiment of such wider human isolation: he sits all day in his room and never leaves it during the day, whereas his job is obscure, since he is tasked to just watch some chart going up and down on his computer screen, so he spends more time simply watching YouTube videos in a sidebar. His father phones him and invites him for a visit, but Bruno declines. Bruno communicates with his friend only online, and plays video games with him remotely, again showing their disconnection. Even fake ads are added to ironically mock the viewers accustomed to endless spamming ads, and thus Bruno's spiritual emptiness becomes tangible, effective and relevant.
Not all bits and pieces work in the story. For instance, there is a strange opening act of two Chinese businessmen talking via phone, only two static photos of their faces visible on the left and right of the screen, the year "1 9 9 8" is seen, as the one on the right wakes up the other one at 4am because "Atlas will control the entire Chinese telecommunication and internet network", but the other is grumpy because he is sleepy: "I will rejoice tomorrow. Goodbye, Song!", and hangs up. This could have been cut. Likewise, the opening 24-minute segment revolving just around Bruno sitting in his apartment is too long, while the crucial final segment with the AI Venus is too short, starting only some 5 minutes before the end. This bit is the most fascinating, but too sparse. It consists out of Venus asking Bruno comical questions to assess his psychological status (for instance, what would he do if his friend showed him the photo of his new girlfriend, and it is the photo of Bruno's mother), and then the blond face of a woman emerges from the computer screen, heading towards Bruno on bed. This ends in anticlimax, since it is followed only by bizarre phantasmagorical hallucinations, leaving everything deliberately vague and unsatisfying, to maybe connect it with the superficial nature of any attempt at finding happiness in a computer. The author Gabriel Dordevic still shows a quality made allegory on how people became the victims of AI.
Grade:++
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